<£bition 


THE  WRITINGS    OF 
HARRIET  BEECHER   STOWE 

WITH  BIOGRAPHICAL   INTRODUCTIONS 

PORTRAITS,    AND   OTHER 

ILL  USTRA  TIONS 

IN  SIXTEEN  VOLUMES 
VOLUME    XIV 


HOUGHTON,  MIFFLIN  &  CO. 


STORIES,  SKETCHES 

AND  STUDIES 


BY 


HARRIET   BEECHER   STOWE 

if 


BOSTON    AND    NEW    YORK 
HOUGHTON,  MIFFLIN   AND   COMPANY 


896 


Copyright,  1855, 
j  fejr  PHILLIPS,  SAMPSON  &  CO. 

-    Copyright,  1865,  1875,  1883, 1893, 
BEECHER   STOWE. 


Copyright,  1875, 
BY  J.  B.  FORD  &  CO. 

Copyright,  1896, 
BY  HOUGHTON,  MIFFLIN  &  CO. 

All  rights  reserved. 


The  Riverside  Press,  Cambridge,  Mass.,  U.  S.  A. 
Electrotyped  and  Printed  by  H.  O.  Houghton  &  Co. 


CONTENTS 


PAGE 

INTRODUCTORY  NOTE vii 

UNCLE  LOT 1 

LOVE  VERSUS  LAW 32 

THE  TEA  ROSE 74 

AUNT  MARY 82 

FRANKNESS 90 

COUSIN  WILLIAM 96 

MRS.  A.  AND  MRS.  B;  OR,  WHAT  SHE  THINKS  ABOUT  IT          .  108 

WHICH  is  THE  LIBERAL  MAN  ? 116 

THE  CANAL  BOAT 131 

FEELING 139 

THE  SEAMSTRESS 144 

OLD  FATHER  MORRIS  :  A  SKETCH  FROM  NATURE  ....  156 

THE  CORAL  RING 164 

ART  AND  NATURE 176 

THE  NEW  YEAR'S  GIFT 185 

OUR  WOOD  LOT  IN  WINTER 198 

THE  MOURNING  VEIL 204 

NEW  ENGLAND  MINISTERS 218 

BETTY'S  BRIGHT  IDEA      ..........  234 

DEACON  PITKIN'S  FARM. 

CHAP.  I.  Miss  DIANA 254 

II.   BIAH  CARTER 259 

III.  THE  SHADOW 263 

IV.  THE  GOOD-BY 269 

V.   MOTHER  AND  SON 274 

VI.   GONE  TO  SEA 278 

VII.   THANKSGIVING  AGAIN 284 

THE  FIRST  CHRISTMAS  OF  NEW  ENGLAND. 

CHAP.  I.  IN  THE  HARBOR  OF  CAPE  COD 294 

II.  THE  FIRST  DAY  ON  SHORE 299 

III.  CHRISTMAS-TIDE  IN  PLYMOUTH  HARBOR.        .        .  305 

IV.  ELDER  BREWSTER'S  CHRISTMAS  SERMON    .                .  312 


991569 


VI  CONTENTS 

LITTLE  FOXES. 

CHAP.  I.  FAULT-FINDING 321 

II.  IRRITABILITY 345 

III.  REPRESSION 364 

IV.  PERSISTENCE 335 

V.  INTOLERANCE          .  407 

VI.  DISCOURTESY 428 

VII.    EXACTINGNESS 444 

The  frontispiece  (Mrs.  Stowe  in  1853)  is  after  a  crayon  by  Richmond. 
Ihe  vignette  (Mrs.  Stowe's  home  at  Cincinnati,  C-hio)  is  from  a  draw 
ing  by  Charles  Copeland. 


INTKODUCTOKY  NOTE 

IN  the  early  years  of  her  married  life,  Mrs.  Stowe  was 
an  industrious  writer  in  spite  of  the  numberless  cares  and 
distractions  which  stole  away  her  leisure.  Her  husband  was 
ambitious  that  she  should  win  distinction  by  her  pen,  and 
the  meagre  returns  which  publication  in  journals  brought 
her  were  very  welcome,  since  they  helped  to  eke  out  a 
most  insufficient  income.  There  was  also  in  Cincinnati  a 
literary  society  called  The  Semicolon,  which  made  demands 
upon  its  members,  of  whom  Mrs.  Stowe  was  one,  for  papers, 
sketches,  and  poems.  All  these  influences,  added  to  a 
natural  inclination  to  use  her  pen,  made  Mrs.  Stowe  an 
active  litterateur,  and  in  1842,  the  Harpers  brought  out  a 
collection  of  her  stories  and  sketches  under  the  title,  The 
Mayflower.  The  book  had  a  modest  reception,  and  a  short 
life,  but  after  the  publication  of  Uncle  Tom's  Cabin  it  was 
worth  while  to  revive  it,  and  it  was  republished  with  revi 
sion  and  additions,  in  1855,  by  Phillips  and  Sampson,  who 
then  had  the  publication  of  Uncle  Tom's  Cabin.  The 
book  was  introduced  in  these  words :  — 

"  Mr.  G.  B.  Emerson,  in  his  late  report  to  the  legislature 
of  Massachusetts  on  the  trees  and  shrubs  of  that  State,  thus 
describes  the  Mayflower  :  — 

"  '  Often  from  beneath  the  edge  of  a  snow  bank  are  seen 
rising  the  fragrant  pearly-white  or  rose-colored  flowers  of 
this  earliest  harbinger  of  spring.  It  abounds  in  the  edges 
of  the  woods  about  Plymouth,  as  elsewhere,  and  must  have 
been  the  first  flower  to  salute  the  storm-beaten  crew  of  the 
Mayflower  on  the  conclusion  of  their  first  terrible  winter. 


viii  INTRODUCTORY  NOTE 

Their  descendants  have  thence  piously  derived  the  name, 
although  its  bloom  is  often  passed  before  the  coming  in  of 
May/ 

"  No  flower  could  be  more  appropriately  selected  as  an 
emblem  token  by  the  descendants  of  the  Puritans.  Though 
so  fragrant  and  graceful,  it  is  invariably  the  product  of  the 
hardest  and  most  rocky  soils,  and  seems  to  draw  its  ethereal 
beauty  of  color  and  wealth  of  perfume  rather  from  the  air 
than  from  the  slight  hold  which  its  rootlets  take  of  the 
earth.  It  may  often  be  found  in  fullest  beauty  matting 
a  granite  ledge,  with  scarcely  any  perceptible  soil  for  its 
support.  What  better  emblem  of  that  faith  and  hope  and 
piety  by  which  our  fathers  were  supported  in  dreary  and 
barren  enterprises,  and  which  drew  their  life  and  fragrance 
from  heaven  more  than  earth  ? 

"  The  Mayflower  was,  therefore,  many  years  since  selected 
by  the  author  as  the  title  of  a  series  of  New  England 
sketches.  That  work  had  comparatively  a  limited  circu 
lation,  and  is  now  entirely  out  of  print.  Its  articles  are 
republished  in  the  present  volume,  with  other  miscellaneous 
writings,  which  have  from  time  to  time  appeared  in  differ 
ent  periodicals.  They  have  been  written  in  all  moods,  from 
the  gayest  to  the  gravest ;  they  are  connected,  in  many 
cases,  with  the  memory  of  friends  and  scenes  most  dear. 

"  There  are  those  now  scattered  through  the  world  who 
will  remember  the  social  literary  parties  of  Cincinnati,  for 
whose  genial  meetings  many  of  these  articles  were  prepared. 
With  most  affectionate  remembrances,  the  author  dedicates 
the  book  to  the  yet  surviving  members  of  The  Semicolon." 

In  this  new  and  uniform  edition  of  Mrs.  Stowe's  writing, 
it  has  seemed  best  not  to  preserve  The  Mayflower  intact, 
but  to  distribute  its  contents  among  several  groups,  accord 
ing  to  their  nature.  The  present  volume  contains  a  con 
siderable  portion,  included  in  the  first  sixteen  articles. 
When  The  Atlantic  Monthly  was  established,  Mrs.  Stowe 


INTRODUCTORY  NOTE  ix 

was  urged  to  be  a  regular  contributor.  She  contributed 
The  Mourning  Veil  to  the  first  number,  and,  as  is  well 
known,  published  in  the  magazine  several  serials,  and  a  few 
single  articles,  of  which  New  England  Ministers  was  one. 
Later  in  life,  when  she  was  especially  identified  with  her 
brother's  paper,  The  Christian  Union,  and  its  publishers 
J.  B.  Ford  &  Co.,  she  published  a  little  volume,  in  1875, 
containing  the  next  three  stories.  Little  Foxes  was  one  of 
the  series  published  originally  in  The  Atlantic  Monthly, 
under  the  assumed  name  of  Christopher  Crowfield. 


STORIES,  SKETCHES,   AND   STUDIES 


UNCLE   LOT 


AND  so  I  am  to  write  a  story  —  but  of  what,  and  where  ? 
Shall  it  be  radiant  with  the  sky  of  Italy  ?  or  eloquent  with 
the  beau  ideal  of  Greece  ?  Shall  it  breathe  odor  and  lan 
guor  from  the  orient,  or  chivalry  from  the  Occident  ?  or 
gayety  from  France  ?  or  vigor  from  England  ?  No,  no ; 
these  are  all  too  old  —  too  romance-like  —  too  obviously 
picturesque  for  me.  No  ;  let  me  turn  to  my  own  land  — 
my  own  New  England  ;  the  land  of  bright  fires  and  strong 
hearts ;  the  land  of  deeds,  and  not  of  words ;  the  land  of 
fruits,  and  not  of  flowers ;  the  land  often  spoken  against, 
yet  always  respected  ;  "  the  latchet  of  whose  shoes  the  na 
tions  of  the  earth  are  not  worthy  to  unloose." 

Now,  from  this  very  heroic  apostrophe,  you  may  suppose 
that  I  have  something  very  heroic  to  tell.  By  no  means. 
It  is  merely  a  little  introductory  breeze  of  patriotism,  such 
as  occasionally  brushes  over  every  mind,  bearing  on  its 
wings  the  remembrance  of  all  we  ever  loved  or  cherished 
in  the  land  of  our  early  years ;  and  if  it  should  seem  to  be 
rodomontade  to  any  people  in  other  parts  of  the  earth,  let 
them  only  imagine  it  to  be  said  about  "  Old  Kentuck,"  old 
England,  or  any  other  corner  of  the  world  in  which  they 
happened  to  be  born  and  they  will  find  it  quite  rational. 

But,  as  touching  our  story,  it  is  time  to  begin.  Did  you 
ever  see  the  little  village  of  Newbury,  in  New  England  ? 
I  dare  say  you  never  did ;  for  it  was  just  one  of  those  out- 


2  UNCLE   LOT 

of-the-way  places  where  nobody  ever  came  unless  they  came 
on  purpose  :  a  green  little  hollow,  wedged  like  a  bird's  nest 
between  half  a  dozen  high  hills,  that  kept  off  the  wind  and 
kept  out  foreigners ;  so  that  the  little  place  was  as  straitly 
sui  generis  as  if  there  were  not  another  in  the  world.  The 
inhabitants  were  all  of  that  respectable  old  standfast  family 
whoTpafce^t  a  £ oint  to  be  born,  bred,  married,  to  die,  and  be 
juried  all  in  the .  selfsame  spot.  There  were  just  so  many 
>JiOuj5eG;  JHicf  ju^t  so  many  people  lived  in  them  ;  and  nobody 
ever  seemed  to  be  sick,  or  to  die  either,  at  least  while  I  was 
there.  The  natives  grew  old  till  they  could  not  grow  any 
older,  and  then  they  stood  still,  and  lasted  from  generation 
to  generation.  There  was,  too,  an  unchangeability  about 
all  the  externals  of  Newbury.  Here  was  a  red  house,  and 
there  was  a  brown  house,  and  across  the  way  was  a  yel 
low  house  ;  and  there  was  a  straggling  rail  fence  or  a  tribe 
of  mullein  stalks  between.  The  minister  lived  here,  and 
Squire  Moses  lived  there,  and  Deacon  Hart  lived  under  the 
hill,  and  Messrs.  Nadab  and  Abihu  Peters  lived  by  the  cross 
road,  and  the  old  "widder"  Smith  lived  by  the  meeting 
house,  and  Ebenezer  Camp  kept  a  shoemaker's  shop  on  one 
side,  and  Patience  Mosely  kept  a  milliner's  shop  in  front ; 
and  there  was  old  Comfort  Scran,  who  kept  store  for  the 
whole  town,  and  sold  axeheads,  brass  thimbles,  licorice 
balls,  fancy  handkerchiefs,  and  everything  else  you  can  think 
of.  Here,  too,  was  the  general  post-office,  where  you  might 
see  letters  marvelously  folded,  directed  wrong  side  upward, 
stamped  with  a  thimble,  and  superscribed  to  some  of  the 
Dollys,  or  Pollys,  or  Peters,  or  Moseses  aforenamed  or  not 
named. 

For  the  rest,  as  to  manners,  morals,  arts,  and  sciences, 
the  people  in  Newbury  always  went  to  their  parties  at  three 
o'clock  in  the  afternoon,  and  came  home  before  dark ; 
always  stopped  all  work  the  minute  the  sun  was  down  on 
Saturday  night ;  always  went  to  meeting  on  Sunday ;  had  a 


UNCLE   LOT  3 

schoolhouse  with  all  the  ordinary  inconveniences  ;  were  in 
neighborly  charity  with  each  other ;  read  their  Bibles, 
feared  their  God,  and  were  content  with  such  things  as  they 
had  —  the  best  philosophy,  after  all.  Such  was  the  place 
into  which  Master  James  Benton  made  an  irruption  in  the 
year  eighteen  hundred  and  no  matter  what.  Now,  this 
James  is  to  be  our  hero,  and  he  is  just  the  hero  for  a  sensa 
tion  —  at  least,  so  you  would  have  thought,  if  you  had  been 
in  Newbury  the  week  after  his  arrival.  Master  James  was 
one  of  those  whole-hearted,  energetic  Yankees,  who  rise  in 
the  world  as  naturally  as  cork  does  in  water.  He  possessed 
a  great  share  of  that  characteristic  national  trait  so  happily 
denominated  "cuteness,"  which  signifies  an  ability  to  do 
everything  without  trying,  and  to  know  everything  without 
learning,  and  to  make  more  use  of  one's  ignorance  than 
other  people  do  of  their  knowledge.  This  quality  in  James 
was  mingled  with  an  elasticity  of  animal  spirits,  a  buoy 
ant  cheerfulness  of  mind,  which,  though  found  in  the  New 
England  character,  perhaps,  as  often  as  anywhere  else,  is  not 
ordinarily  regarded  as  one  of  its  distinguishing  traits. 

As  to  the  personal  appearance  of  our  hero,  we  have  not 
much  to  say  of  it  —  not  half  so  much  as  the  girls  in  New- 
bury  found  it  necessary  to  remark,  the  first  Sabbath  that  he 
shone  out  in  the  meeting-house.  There  was  a  saucy  frank 
ness  of  countenance,  a  knowing  roguery  of  eye,  a  joviality 
and  prankishness  of  demeanor,  that  was  wonderfully  capti 
vating,  especially  to  the  ladies. 

It  is  true  that  Master  James  had  an  uncommonly  com 
fortable  opinion  of  himself,  a  full  faith  that  there  was  no 
thing  in  creation  that  he  could  not  learn  and  could  not  do ; 
and  this  faith  was  maintained  with  an  abounding  and  trium 
phant  joy  fulness,  that  fairly  carried  your  sympathies  along 
with  him,  and  made  you  feel  quite  as  much  delighted  with 
his  qualifications  and  prospects  as  he  felt  himself.  There 
are  two  kinds  of  self-sufficiency  :  one  is  amusing,  and  the 


4  UNCLE   LOT 

other  is  provoking.  His  was  the  amusing  kind.  It  seemed, 
in  truth,  to  be  only  the  buoyancy  and  overflow  of  a  viva 
cious  mind,  delighted  with  everything  delightful,  in  himself 
or  others.  He  was  always  ready  to  magnify  his  own  praise, 
but  quite  as  ready  to  exalt  his  neighbor,  if  the  channel  of  dis 
course  ran  that  way  :  his  own  perfections  being  more  com 
pletely  within  his  knowledge,  he  rejoiced  in  them  more 
constantly ;  but,  if  those  of  any  one  else  came  within  the 
same  range,  he  was  quite  as  much  astonished  and  edifled  as 
if  they  had  been  his  own. 

Master  James,  at  the  time  of  his  transit  to  the  town  of 
Newbury,  was  only  eighteen  years  of  age  ;  so  that  it  was 
difficult  to  say  which  predominated  in  him  most,  the  boy  or 
the  man.  The  belief  that  he  could,  and  the  determination 
that  he  would,  be  something  in  the  world  had  caused  him  to 
abandon  his  home,  and,  with  all  his  worldly  effects  tied  in 
a  blue  cotton  pocket-handkerchief,  to  proceed  to  seek  his 
fortune  in  Newbury.  And  never  did  stranger  in  Yankee 
village  rise  to  promotion  with  more  unparalleled  rapidity, 
or  boast  a  greater  plurality  of  employment.  He  figured  as 
schoolmaster  all  the  week,  and  as  chorister  on  Sundays,  and 
taught  singing  and  reading  in  the  evenings,  besides  studying 
Latin  and  Greek  with  the  minister,  nobody  knew  when ; 
thus  fitting  for  college,  while  he  seemed  to  be  doing  every 
thing  else  in  the  world  besides. 

James  understood  every  art  and  craft  of  popularity,  and 
made  himself  mightily  at  home  in  all  the  chimney-corners  of 
the  region  round  about ;  knew  the  geography  of  everybody's 
cider  barrel  and  apple  bin,  helping  himself  and  every  one  else 
therefrom  with  all  bountifulness  ;  rejoicing  in  the  good  things 
of  this  life,  devouring  the  old  ladies'  doughnuts  and  pump 
kin  pies  with  most  flattering  appetite,  and  appearing  equally 
to  relish  every  body  and  thing  that  came  in  his  way. 

The  degree  and  versatility  of  his  acquirements  were  truly 
wonderful.  He  knew  all  about  arithmetic  and  history,  and 


UNCLE   LOT  5 

all  about  catching  squirrels  and  planting  corn ;  made  poetry 
and  hoe-handles  with  equal  celerity  ;  wound  yarn  and  took 
out  grease  spots  for  old  ladies,  and  made  nosegays  and  knick- 
knacks  for  young  ones  ;  caught  trout  Saturday  afternoons, 
and  discussed  doctrines  on  Sundays,  with  equal  adroitness  and 
effect.  In  short,  Mr.  James  moved  on  through  the  place 

"  Victorious, 
Happy  and  glorious," 

welcomed  and  privileged  by  everybody  in  every  place  ;  and 
when  he  had  told  his  last  ghost  story,  and  fairly  nourished 
himself  out  of  doors  at  the  close  of  a  long  winter's  evening, 
you  might  see  the  hard  face  of  the  good  man  of  the  house 
still  phosphorescent  with  his  departing  radiance,  and  hear  him 
exclaim,  in  a  paroxysm  of  admiration,  that  "  Jemeses  talk 
re'ly  did  beat  all ;  that  he  was  sartainly  most  a  miraculous 
cre'tur  ! " 

It  was  wonderfully  contrary  to  the  buoyant  activity  of  Mas 
ter  James's  mind  to  keep  a  school.  He  had,  moreover,  so 
much  of  the  boy  and  the  rogue  in  his  composition,  that  he 
could  not  be  strict  with  the  iniquities  of  the  curly  pates  under 
his  charge ;  and  when  he  saw  how  determinately  every  little 
heart  was  boiling  over  with  mischief  and  motion,  he  felt  in 
his  soul  more  disposed  to  join  in  and  help  them  to  a  frolic 
than  to  lay  justice  to  the  line,  as  was  meet.  This  would  have 
made  a  sad  case,  had  it  not  been  that  the  activity  of  the  mas 
ter's  mind  communicated  itself  to  his  charge,  just  as  the  re 
action  of  one  brisk  little  spring  will  fill  a  manufactory  with 
motion  ;  so  that  there  was  more  of  an  impulse  towards  study 
in  the  golden,  good-natured  day  of  James  Benton  than  in 
the  time  of  all  that  went  before  or  came  after  him. 

But  when  "  school  was  out,"  James's  spirits  foamed  over 
as  naturally  as  a  tumbler  of  soda  water,  and  he  could  jump 
over  benches  and  burst  out  of  doors  with  as  much  rapture  as 
the  veriest  little  elf  in  his  company.  Then  you  might  have 
seen  him  stepping  homeward  with  a  most  felicitous  expres- 


6  UNCLE  LOT 

sion  of  countenance,  occasionally  reaching  his  hand  through 
the  fence  for  a  bunch  of  currants,  or  over  it  after  a  flower, 
or  bursting  into  some  back  yard  to  help  an  old  lady  empty 
her  washtub,  or  stopping  to  pay  his  devoirs  to  Aunt  This  or 
Mistress  That,  for  James  well  knew  the  importance  of  the 
"  powers  that  be,"  and  always  kept  the  sunny  side  of  the 
old  ladies. 

We  shall  not  answer  for  James's  general  flirtations,  which 
were  sundry  and  manifold  ;  for  he  had  just  the  kindly  heart 
that  fell  in  love  with  everything  in  feminine  shape  that  came 
in  his  way,  and  if  he  had  not  been  blessed  with  an  equal 
facility  in  falling  out  again,  we  do  not  know  what  ever  would 
have  become  of  him.  But  at  length  he  came  into  an  abiding 
captivity,  and  it  is  quite  time  that  he  should  ;  for  having  de 
voted  thus  much  space  to  the  illustration  of  our  hero,  it  is 
fit  we  should  do  something  in  behalf  of  our  heroine ;  and, 
therefore,  we  must  beg  the  reader's  attention  while  we  draw 
a  diagram  or  two  that  will  assist  him  in  gaining  a  right  idea 
of  her. 

Do  you  see  yonder  brown  house,  with  its  broad  roof  slop 
ing  almost  to  the  ground  on  one  side,  and  a  great,  unsup 
ported  sunbonnet  of  a  piazza  shooting  out  over  the  front 
door  ?  You  must  often  have  noticed  it ;  you  have  seen  its 
tall  wellsweep,  relieved  against  the  clear  evening  sky,  or 
observed  the  feather  beds  and  bolsters  lounging  out  of  its 
chamber  windows  on  a  still  summer  morning ;  you  recollect 
its  gate,  that  swung  with  a  chain  and  a  great  stone  ;  its 
pantry  window,  latticed  with  little  brown  slabs,  and  looking 
out  upon  a  forest  of  beanpoles.  You  remember  the  zephyrs 
that  used  to  play  among  its  pea  brush,  and  shake  the  long 
tassels  of  its  corn  patch,  and  how  vainly  any  zephyr  might 
essay  to  perform  similar  flirtations  with  the  considerate 
cabbages  that  were  solemnly  vegetating  near  by.  Then 
there  was  the  whole  neighborhood  of  purple-leaved  beets 
and  feathery  parsnips ;  there  were  the  billows  of  gooseberry 


UNCLE   LOT  7 

bushes  rolled  up  by  the  fence,  interspersed  with  rows  of 
quince-trees ;  and  far  off  in  one  corner  was  one  little  patch, 
penuriously  devoted  to  ornament,  which  flamed  with  mari 
golds,  poppies,  snappers,  and  four-o'clocks.  Then  there  was 
a  little  box  by  itself  with  one  rose  geranium  in  it,  which 
seemed  to  look  around  the  garden  as  much  like  a  stranger 
as  a  French  dancing-master  in  a  Yankee  meeting-house. 

That  is  the  dwelling  of  Uncle  Lot  Griswold.  Uncle  Lot, 
as  he  was  commonly  called,  had  a  character  that  a  painter 
would  sketch  for  its  lights  and  contrasts  rather  than  its  sym 
metry.  He  was  a  chestnut  burr,  abounding  with  briers 
without  and  with  substantial  goodness  within.  He  had  the 
strong-grained  practical  sense,  the  calculating  worldly  wis 
dom  of  his  class  of  people  in  New  England ;  he  had,  too, 
a  kindly  heart ;  but  all  the  strata  of  his  character  were 
crossed  by  a  vein  of  surly  petulance,  that,  halfway  between 
joke  and  earnest,  colored  everything  that  he  said  and  did. 

If  you  asked  a  favor  of  Uncle  Lot,  he  generally  kept  you 
arguing  half  an  hour,  to  prove  that  you  really  needed  it, 
and  to  tell  you  that  he  could  not  all  the  while  be  troubled 
with  helping  one  body  or  another,  all  which  time  you  might 
observe  him  regularly  making  his  preparations  to  grant  your 
request,  and  see,  by  an  odd  glimmer  of  his  eye,  that  he  was 
preparing  to  let  you  hear  the  "conclusion  of  the  whole 
matter,"  which  was,  "  Well,  well  —  I  guess  —  I  '11  go,  on 
the  hull  —  I  s'pose  I  must,  at  least ;  "  so  off  he  would  go 
and  work  while  the  day  lasted,  and  then  wind  up  with  a 
farewell  exhortation  "  not  to  be  a-callin'  on  your  neighbors 
when  you  could  get  along  without."  If  any  of  Uncle  Lot's 
neighbors  were  in  any  trouble,  he  was  always  at  hand  to 
tell  them  that  "  they  should  n't  'a'  done  so  ;  "  that  "  it  was 
strange  they  could  n't  had  more  sense  ;  "  and  then  to  close 
his  exhortations  by  laboring  more  diligently  than  any  to 
bring  them  out  of  their  difficulties,  groaning  in  spirit,  mean 
while,  that  folks  would  make  people  so  much  trouble. 


8  UNCLE   LOT 

"  Uncle  Lot,  father  wants  to  know  if  you  will  lend  him 
your  hoe  to-day,"  says  a  little  boy,  making  his  way  across 
a  cornfield. 

"  Why  don't  your  father  use  his  own  hoe  ?  " 

"  Ours  is  broke." 

"  Broke  !  How  came  it  broke  ?  " 

"  I  broke  it  yesterday,  trying  to  hit  a  squirrel." 

"  What  business  had  you  to  be  hittin'  squirrels  with  a 
hoe  ?  —  say  !  " 

"  But  father  wants  to  borrow  yours." 

"  Why  don't  you  have  that  mended  ?  It 's  a  great  pester 
to  have  everybody  usin'  a  body's  things." 

"  Well,  I  can  borrow  one  somewhere  else,  I  suppose," 
says  the  suppliant.  After  the  boy  has  stumbled  across 
the  ploughed  ground,  and  is  fairly  over  the  fence,  Uncle 
Lot  calls,  — 

"  Hallo,  there,  you  little  rascal  !  what  are  you  goin'  off 
without  the  hoe  for  ?  " 

"  I  did  n't  know  as  you  meant  to  lend  it." 

"  I  did  n't  say  I  would  n't,  did  I  ?  Here,  come  and  take 
it  —  stay,  I  '11  bring  it ;  and  do  tell  your  father  not  to  be 
a-lettin'  you  hunt  squirrels  with  his  hoes  next  time." 

Uncle  Lot's  household  consisted  of  Aunt  Sally,  his  wife, 
and  an  only  son  and  daughter  ;  the  son,  at  the  time  our 
story  begins,  was  at  a  neighboring  literary  institution.  Aunt 
Sally  was  precisely  as  clever,  as  easy  to  be  entreated,  and 
kindly  in  externals,  as  her  helpmate  was  the  reverse.  She 
was  one  of  those  respectable,  pleasant  old  ladies  whom  you 
might  often  have  met  on  the  way  to  church  on  a  Sunday, 
equipped  with  a  great  fan  and  a  psalm-book,  and  carrying 
some  dried  orange  peel  or  a  stalk  of  fennel,  to  give  to  the 
children  if  they  were  sleepy  in  meeting.  She  was  as 
cheerful  and  domestic  as  the  teakettle  that  sung  by  her 
kitchen  fire,  and  slipped  along  among  Uncle  Lot's  angles 
and  peculiarities  as  if  there  never  was  anything  the  matter 


UNCLE   LOT  9 

in  the  world ;  and  the  same  mantle  of  sunshine  seemed  to 
have  fallen  on  Miss  Grace,  her  only  daughter. 

Pretty  in  her  person  and  pleasant  in  her  ways,  endowed 
with  native  self-possession  and  address,  lively  and  chatty, 
having  a  mind  and  a  will  of  her  own,  yet  good-humored 
withal,  Miss  Grace  was  a  universal  favorite.  It  would 
have  puzzled  a  city  lady  to  understand  how  Grace,  who  never 
was  out  of  Newbury  in  her  life,  knew  the  way  to  speak, 
and  act,  and  behave,  on  all  occasions,  exactly  as  if  she  had 
been  taught  how.  She  was  just  one  of  those  wild  flowers 
which  you  may  sometimes  see  waving  its  little  head  in  the 
woods,  and  looking  so  civilized  and  garden-like,  that  you 
wonder  if  it  really  did  corne  up  and  grow  there  by  nature. 
She  was  an  adept  in  all  household  concerns,  and  there  was 
something  amazingly  pretty  in  her  energetic  way  of  bus 
tling  about,  and  "  putting  things  to  rights."  Like  most 
Yankee  damsels,  she  had  a  longing  after  the  tree  of  know 
ledge,  and,  having  exhausted  the  literary  fountains  of  a  dis 
trict  school,  she  fell  to  reading  whatsoever  came  in  her  way. 
True,  she  had  but  little  to  read  ;  but  what  she  perused  she 
had  her  own  thoughts  upon,  so  that  a  person  of  information, 
in  talking  with  her,  would  feel  a  constant  wondering  pleas 
ure  to  find  that  she  had  so  much  more  to  say  of  this,  that, 
and  the  other  thing  than  he  expected. 

Uncle  Lot,  like  every  one  else,  felt  the  magical  bright 
ness  of  his  daughter,  and  was  delighted  with  her  praises,  as 
might  be  discerned  by  his  often  finding  occasion  to  remark 
that  "  he  did  n't  see  why  the  boys  need  to  be  all  the  time 
a-comin'  to  see  Grace,  for  she  was  nothing  so  extraor'nary, 
after  all."  About  all  matters  and  things  at  home  she  gen 
erally  had  her  own  way,  while  Uncle  Lot  would  scold  and 
give  up  with  a  regular  good  grace  that  was  quite  creditable. 

"  Father,"  says  Grace,  "  I  want  to  have  a  party  next 
week." 

"  You  sha'n't  go  to  havin'  your  parties,  Grace.     I  always 


10  UNCLE   LOT 

have  to  eat  bits  and  ends  a  fortnight  after  you  have  one, 
and  I  won't  have  it  so."  And  so  Uncle  Lot  walked  out, 
and  Aunt  Sally  and  Miss  Grace  proceeded  to  make  the  cake 
and  pies  for  the  party. 

When  Uncle  Lot  came  home,  he  saw  a  long  array  of  pies 
and  rows  of  cakes  on  the  kitchen  table. 

"  Grace  —  Grace  —  Grace,  I  say  !  What  is  all  this  here 
flummery  for  ?  " 

"Why,  it  is  to  eat,  father,"  said  Grace,  with  a  good- 
natured  look  of  consciousness. 

Uncle  Lot  tried  his  best  to  look  sour  ;  but  his  visage 
began  to  wax  comical  as  he  looked  at  his  merry  daughter ; 
so  he  said  nothing,  but  quietly  sat  down  to  his  dinner. 

"  Father,"  said  Grace,  after  dinner,  "  we  shall  want  two 
more  candlesticks  next  week." 

"  Why,  can't  you  have  your  party  with  what  you  've 
got?"  ' 

"No,  father,  we  want  two  more." 

"  I  can't  afford  it,  Grace  —  there 's  no  sort  of  use  on't 
—  and  you  sha'n't  have  any." 

"  Oh,  father,  now  do,"  said  Grace. 

"  I  won't,  neither,"  said  Uncle  Lot,  as  he  sallied  out  of 
the  house,  and  took  the  road  to  Comfort  Scran's  store. 

In  half  an  hour  he  returned  again  ;  and  fumbling  in  his 
pocket,  and  drawing  forth  a  candlestick,  leveled  it  at  Grace. 

"  There  's  your  candlestick." 

"  But,  father,  I  said  I  wanted  two." 

"  Why,  can't  you  make  one  do  ?  " 

"  No,  I  can't ;  I  must  have  two." 

"  Well,  then,  there  's  t'other  ;  and  here  's  a  fol-de-rol  for 
you  to  tie  round  your  neck."  So  saying,  he  bolted  for  the 
door,  and  took  himself  off  with  all  speed.  It  was  much 
after  this  fashion  that  matters  commonly  went  on  in  the 
brown  house. 

But  having  tarried  long  on  the  way,  we  must  proceed 
with  the  main  story. 


UNCLE   LOT  11 

James  thought  Miss  Grace  was  a  glorious  girl ;  and  as  to 
what  Miss  Grace  thought  of  Master  James,  perhaps  it  would 
not  have  been  developed  had  she  not  been  called  to  stand 
on  the  defensive  for  him  with  Uncle  Lot.  For,  from  the 
time  that  the  whole  village  of  Newbury  began  to  be  wholly 
given  unto  the  praise  of  Master  James,  Uncle  Lot  set  his 
face  as  a  flint  against  him  —  from  the  laudable  fear  of  fol 
lowing  the  multitude.  He  therefore  made  conscience  of 
stoutly  gainsaying  everything  that  was  said  in  his  behalf, 
which,  as  James  was  in  high  favor  with  Aunt  Sally,  he 
had  frequent  opportunities  to  do. 

So  when  Miss  Grace  perceived  that  Uncle  Lot  did  not 
like  our  hero  as  much  as  he  ought  to  do,  she,  of  course,  was 
bound  to  like  him  well  enough  to  make  up  for  it.  Certain 
it  is  that  they  were  remarkably  happy  in  finding  opportuni 
ties  of  being  acquainted ;  that  James  waited  on  her,  as  a 
matter  of  course,  from  singing-school  j  that  he  volunteered 
making  a  new  box  for  her  geranium  on  an  improved  plan ; 
and  above  all,  that  he  was  remarkably  particular  in  his 
attentions  to  Aunt  Sally —  a  stroke  of  policy  which  showed 
that  James  had  a  natural  genius  for  this  sort  of  matters. 
Even  when  emerging  from  the  meeting-house  in  full  glory, 
with  flute  and  psalm-book  under  his  arm,  he  would  stop  to 
ask  her  how  she  did  ;  and  if  't  was  cold  weather,  he  would 
carry  her  foot-stove  all  the  way  home  from  meeting,  dis 
coursing  upon  the  sermon  and  other  serious  matters,  as 
Aunt  Sally  observed,  "  in  the  pleasantest,  prettiest  way  that 
ever  ye  see."  This  flute  was  one  of  the  crying  sins  of 
James  in  the  eyes  of  Uncle  Lot.  James  was  particularly 
fond  of  it,  because  he  had  learned  to  play  on  it  by  intuition ; 
and  on  the  decease  of  the  old  pitchpipe,  which  was  slain  by 
a  fall  from  the  gallery,  he  took  the  liberty  to  introduce  the 
flute  in  its  place.  For  this  and  other  sins,  and  for  the 
good  reasons  above  named,  Uncle  Lot's  countenance  was 
not  towards  James,  neither  could  he  be  moved  to  him-ward 
by  any  manner  of  means. 


12  UNCLE   LOT 

To  all  Aunt  Sally's  good  words  and  kind  speeches,  he 
had  only  to  say  that  "  he  did  n't  like  him ;  that  he  hated  to 
see  him  a-manifesting  and  glorifying  there  in  the  front  gal 
lery  Sundays,  and  a-acting  everywhere  as  if  he  was  master 
of  all :  he  did  n't  like  it  and  he  would  n't."  But  our  hero 
was  no  whit  cast  down  or  discomfited  by  the  malcontent 
aspect  of  Uncle  Lot.  On  the  contrary,  when  report  was 
made  to  him  of  divers  of  his  hard  speeches,  he  only  shrugged 
his  shoulders,  with  a  very  satisfied  air,  and  remarked  that 
"  he  knew  a  thing  or  two  for  all  that." 

"  Why,  James,"  said  his  companion  and  chief  counselor, 
"  do  you  think  Grace  likes  you  ?  " 

"I  don't  know,"  said  our  hero,  with  a  comfortable 
appearance  of  certainty. 

"  But  you  can't  get  her,  James,  if  Uncle  Lot  is  cross 
about  it." 

"  Fudge !  I  can  make  Uncle  Lot  like  me  if  I  have  a 
mind  to  try." 

"  Well  then,  Jim,  you  '11  have  to  give  up  that  flute  of 
yours,  I  tell  you  now." 

"  Fa,  sol,  la  —  I  can  make  him  like  me  and  my  flute 
too." 

"  Why,  how  will  you  do  it  ?  " 

"  Oh,  I  '11  work  it,"  said  our  hero. 

"  Well,  Jim,  I  tell  you  now,  you  don't  know  Uncle  Lot 
if  you  say  so  :  for  he  is  just  the  settest  crittur  in  his  way 
that  ever  you  saw." 

"  I  do  know  Uncle  Lot,  though,  better  than  most  folks ; 
he  is  no  more  cross  than  I  am ;  and  as  to  his  being  set,  you 
have  nothing  to  do  but  make  him  think  he  is  in  his  own 
way  when  he  is  in  yours  —  that  is  all." 

"Well,"  said  the  other,  "but  you  see  I  don't  believe  it." 

"  And  I  '11  bet  you  a  gray  squirrel  that  I  '11  go  there  this 
very  evening,  and  get  him  to  like  me  and  my  flute  both," 
said  James. 


UNCLE  LOT  13 

Accordingly  the  late  sunshine  of  that  afternoon  shone 
full  on  the  yellow  buttons  of  James  as  he  proceeded  to  the 
place  of  conflict.  It  was  a  bright,  beautiful  evening.  A 
thunder-storm  had  just  cleared  away,  and  the  silver  clouds 
lay  rolled  up  in  masses  around  the  setting  sun  ;  the  rain 
drops  were  sparkling  and  winking  to  each  other  over  the 
ends  of  the  leaves,  and  all  the  bluebirds  and  robins,  break 
ing  forth  into  song,  made  the  little  green  valley  as  merry 
as  a  musical  box. 

James's  soul  was  always  overflowing  with  that  kind  of 
poetry  which  consists  in  feeling  unspeakably  happy ;  and  it 
is  not  to  be  wondered  at,  considering  where  he  was  going, 
that  he  should  feel  in  a  double  ecstasy  on  the  present  occa 
sion.  He  stepped  gayly  along,  occasionally  springing  over 
a  fence  to  the  right  to  see  whether  the  rain  had  swollen  the 
trout  brook,  or  to  the  left  to  notice  the  ripening  of  Mr. 
Somebody's  watermelons  —  for  James  always  had  an  eye 
on  all  his  neighbors'  matters  as  well  as  his  own. 

In  this  way  he  proceeded  till  he  arrived  at  the  picket 
fence  that  marked  the  commencement  of  Uncle  Lot's 
ground.  Here  he  stopped  to  consider.  Just  then  four  or 
five  sheep  walked  up,  and  began  also  to  consider  a  loose 
picket,  which  was  hanging  just  ready  to  drop  off;  and 
James  began  to  look  at  the  sheep.  "Well,  mister,"  said 
he,  as  he  observed  the  leader  judiciously  drawing  himself 
through  the  gap,  "in  with  you — just  what  I  wanted;'7 
and  having  waited  a  moment  to  ascertain  that  all  the  com 
pany  were  likely  to  follow,  he  ran  with  all  haste  towards 
the  house,  and  swinging  open  the  gate,  pressed  all  breath 
less  to  the  door. 

"  Uncle  Lot,  there  are  four  or  five  sheep  in  your  gar 
den  !  "  Uncle  Lot  dropped  his  whetstone  and  scythe. 

"  I  '11  drive  them  out,"  said  our  hero  ;  and  with  that,  he 
ran  down  the  garden  alley,  and  made  a  furious  descent  on 
the  enemy  ;  bestirring  himself,  as  Bunyan  says,  "  lustily 


14  UNCLE  LOT 

and  with  good  courage/'  till  every  sheep  had  skipped  out 
much  quicker  than  it  skipped  in ;  and  then,  springing  over 
the  fence,  he  seized  a  great  stone,  and  nailed  on  the  picket 
so  effectually  that  no  sheep  could  possibly  encourage  the 
hope  of  getting  in  again.  This  was  all  the  work  of  a  min 
ute,  and  he  was  back  again ;  but  so  exceedingly  out  of 
breath  that  it  was  necessary  for  him  to  stop  a  moment  and 
rest  himself.  Uncle  Lot  looked  ungraciously  satisfied. 

"  What  under  the  canopy  set  you  to  scampering  so  ?  " 
said  he ;  "I  could  V  driv  out  them  critturs  myself." 

"  If  you  are  at  all  particular  about  driving  them  out  your 
self,  I  can  let  them  in  again,"  said  James. 

Uncle  Lot  looked  at  him  with  an  odd  sort  of  twinkle  in 
the  corner  of  his  eye. 

"  'Spose  I  must  ask  you  to  walk  in,"  said  he. 

"  Much  obliged,"  said  James ;  "  but  I  am  in  a  great 
hurry."  So  saying,  he  started  in  very  business-like  fash 
ion  towards  the  gate. 

"  You  'd  better  jest  stop  a  minute." 

"  Can't  stay  a  minute." 

"  I  don't  see  what  possesses  you  to  be  all  the  while  in 
sich  in  hurry  ;  a  body  would  think  you  had  all  creation  on 
your  shoulders." 

"  Just  my  situation,  Uncle  Lot,"  said  James,  swinging 
open  the  gate. 

"Well,  at  any  rate,  have  a  drink  of  cider,  can't  ye?" 
said  Uncle  Lot,  who  was  now  quite  engaged  to  have  his 
own  way  in  the  case. 

James  found  it  convenient  to  accept  this  invitation,  and 
Uncle  Lot  was  twice  as  good-natured  as  if  he  had  stayed  in 
the  first  of  the  matter. 

Once  fairly  forced  into  the  premises,  James  thought  fit 
to  forget  his  long  walk  and  excess  of  business,  especially  as 
about  that  moment  Aunt  Sally  and  Miss  Grace  returned 
from  an  afternoon  call.  You  may  be  sure  that  the  last 


UNCLE   LOT  15 

thing  these  respectable  ladies  looked  for  was  to  find  Uncle 
Lot  and  Master  James  tete-k-tete,  over  a  pitcher  of  cider ; 
and  when,  as  they  entered,  our  hero  looked  up  with  some 
thing  of  a  mischievous  air,  Miss  Grace  in  particular  was  so 
puzzled  that  it  took  her  at  least  a  quarter  of  an  hour  to  un 
tie  her  bonnet  strings.  But  James  stayed,  and  acted  the 
agreeable  to  perfection.  First,  he  must  needs  go  down  into 
the  garden  to  look  at  Uncle  Lot's  wonderful  cabbages,  and 
then  he  promenaded  all  around  the  corn  patch,  stopping 
every  few  moments  and  looking  up  with  an  appearance  of 
great  gratification,  as  if  he  had  never  seen  such  corn  in  his 
life ;  and  then  he  examined  Uncle  Lot's  favorite  apple-tree 
with  an  expression  of  wonderful  interest. 

"  I  never  !  "  he  broke  forth,  having  stationed  himself 
against  the  fence  opposite  to  it ;  "  what  kind  of  an  apple- 
tree  is  that  ?  " 

"  It 's  a  bellflower,  or  somethin'  another,"  said  Uncle  Lot. 

"  Why,  where  did  you  get  it  ?  I  never  saw  such  apples  !  " 
said  our  hero,  with  his  eyes  still  fixed  on  the  tree. 

Uncle  Lot  pulled  up  a  stalk  or  two  of  weeds,  and  threw 
them  over  the  fence,  just  to  show  that  he  did  not  care  any 
thing  about  the  matter ;  and  then  he  came  up  and  stood  by 
James. 

"  Nothin7  so  remarkable,  as  I  know  on,"  said  he. 

Just  then  Grace  came  to  say  that  supper  was  ready. 
Once  seated  at  table,  it  was  astonishing  to  see  the  perfect 
and  smiling  assurance  with  which  our  hero  continued  his 
addresses  to  Uncle  Lot.  It  sometimes  goes  a  great  way  to 
wards  making  people  like  us  to  take  it  for  granted  that  they 
do  already  ;  and  upon  this  principle  James  proceeded.  He 
talked,  laughed,  told  stories,  and  joked  with  the  most  fear 
less  assurance,  occasionally  seconding  his  words  by  looking 
Uncle  Lot  in  the  face,  with  a  countenance  so  full  of  good 
will  as  would  have  melted  any  snowdrift  of  prejudices  in 
the  world. 


16  UNCLE   LOT 

James  also  had  one  natural  accomplishment,  more  cour 
tier-like  than  all  the  diplomacy  in  Europe,  and  that  was  the 
gift  of  feeling  a  real  interest  for  anybody  in  five  minutes  ; 
so  that,  if  he  began  to  please  in  jest,  he  generally  ended  in 
earnest.  With  great  simplicity  of  mind,  he  had  a  natural 
tact  for  seeing  into  others,  and  watched  their  motions  with 
the  same  delight  with  which  a  child  gazes  at  the  wheels  and 
springs  of  a  watch,  to  "  see  what  it  will  do." 

The  rough  exterior  and  latent  kindness  of  Uncle  Lot  were 
quite  a  spirit-stirring  study  ;  and  when  tea  was  over,  as  he 
and  Grace  happened  to  be  standing  together  in  the  front 
door,  he  broke  forth,  — 

"  I  do  really  like  your  father,  Grace !  " 

"  Do  you  ?  "  said  Grace. 

"  Yes,  I  do.  He  has  something  in  him,  and  I  like  him 
all  the  better  for  having  to  fish  it  out." 

"  Well,  I  hope  you  will  make  him  like  you,"  said  Grace 
unconsciously  ;  and  then  she  stopped,  and  looked  a  little 
ashamed. 

James  was  too  well  bred  to  see  this,  or  look  as  if  Grace 
meant  any  more  than  she  said,  —  a  kind  of  breeding  not  al 
ways  attendant  on  more  fashionable  polish,  —  so  he  only  an 
swered,  — 

"  I  think  I  shall,  Grace,  though  I  doubt  whether  I  can 
get  him  to  own  it." 

"  He  is  the  kindest  man  that  ever  was,"  said  Grace ; 
"  and  he  always  acts  as  if  he  was  ashamed  of  it." 

James  turned  a  little  away,  and  looked  at  the  bright  even 
ing  sky,  which  was  glowing  like  a  calm,  golden  sea ;  and 
over  it  was  the  silver  new  moon,  with  one  little  star  to  hold 
the  candle  for  her.  He  shook  some  bright  drops  off  from  a 
rosebush  near  by,  and  watched  to  see  them  shine  as  they 
fell,  while  Grace  stood  very  quietly  waiting  for  him  to 
speak  again. 

"  Grace,"  said  he  at  last,  "  I  am  going  to  college  this 
fall." 


UNCLE   LOT  17 

"  So  you  told  me  yesterday/'  said  Grace. 

James  stooped  down  over  Grace's  geranium,  and  began 
to  busy  himself  with  pulling  off  all  the  dead  leaves,  remark 
ing  in  the  mean  while,  — 

"  And  if  I  do  get  him  to  like  me,  Grace,  will  you  like 
me  too  ?  " 

"  I  like  you  now  very  well,"  said  Grace. 

"Come,  Grace,  you  know  what  I  mean,"  said  James, 
looking  steadfastly  at  the  top  of  the  apple-tree. 

"  Well,  I  wish,  then,  you  would  understand  what  I  mean 
without  my  saying  any  more  about  it,"  said  Grace. 

"  Oh,  to  be  sure  I  will  !  "  said  our  hero,  looking  up  with 
a  very  intelligent  air ;  and  so,  as  Aunt  Sally  would  say,  the 
matter  was  settled,  with  "no  words  about  it." 

Now  shall  we  narrate  how  our  hero,  as  he  saw  Uncle  Lot 
approaching  the  door,  had  the  impudence  to  take  out  his 
flute,  and  put  the  parts  together,  arranging  and  adjusting 
the  stops  with  great  composure  ? 

"  Uncle  Lot,"  said  he,  looking  up,  "  this  is  the  best  flute 
that  ever  I  saw.  " 

"  I  hate  them  tooting  critturs,"  said  Uncle  Lot  snap 
pishly. 

"  I  declare  !  I  wonder  how  you  can,"  said  James  ;  "  for 
I  do  think  they  exceed  "  — 

So  saying,  he  put  the  flute  to  his  mouth,  and  ran  up  and 
down  a  long  flourish. 

"  There  !  what  do  you  think  of  that  ?  "  said  he,  looking 
in  Uncle  Lot's  face  with  much  delight. 

Uncle  Lot  turned  and  marched  into  the  house,  but  soon 
faced  to  the  right-about,  and  came  out  again,  for  James  was 
fingering  "  Yankee  Doodle  "  —  that  appropriate  national  air 
for  the  descendants  of  the  Puritans. 

Uncle  Lot's  patriotism  began  to  bestir  itself ;  and  now, 
if  it  had  been  anything,  as  he  said,  but  "  that  'ere  flute  "  — 
As  it  was,  he  looked  more  than  once  at  James's  fingers. 


18  UNCLE  LOT 

"  How  under  the  sun  could  you  learn  to  do  that  ?  "  said 
he. 

"  Oh,  it 's  easy  enough,"  said  James,  proceeding  with  an 
other  tune  ;  and,  having  played  it  through,  he  stopped  a 
moment  to  examine  the  joints  of  his  flute,  and  in  the  mean 
time  addressed  Uncle  Lot:  "You  can't  think  how  grand 
this  is  for  pitching  tunes  —  I  always  pitch  the  tunes  on 
Sunday  with  it." 

"  Yes  ;  but  I  don't  think  it 's  a  right  and  fit  instrument 
for  the  Lord's  house,"  said  Uncle  Lot. 

"  Why  not  ?  It  is  only  a  kind  of  a  long  pitchpipe,  you 
see,"  said  James ;  "  and,  seeing  the  old  one  is  broken,  and 
this  will  answer,  I  don't  see  why  it  is  not  better  than 
nothing." 

"  Why,  yes,  it  may  be  better  than  nothing,"  said  Uncle 
Lot ;  "  but,  as  I  always  tell  Grace  and  my  wife,  it  ain't  the 
right  kind  of  instrument,  after  all  ;  it  ain't  solemn." 

"  Solemn  !  "  said  James ;  "  that  is  according  as  you  work 
it :  see  here,  now." 

So  saying,  he  struck  up  Old  Hundred,  and  proceeded 
through  it  with  great  perseverance. 

"  There,  now  !  "   said  he. 

"  Well,  well,  I  don't  know  but  it  is,"  said  Uncle  Lot ; 
"  but  as  I  said  at  first,  I  don't  like  the  look  of  it  in 
meetin'." 

"  Bat  yet  you  really  think  it  is  better  than  nothing," 
said  James,  "  for  you  see  I  could  n't  pitch  my  tunes  with 
out  it." 

"  Maybe  't  is,"  said  Uncle  Lot ;  "  but  that  is  n't  sayin' 
much." 

This,  however,  was  enough  for  Master  James,  who  soon 
after  departed,  with  his  flute  in  his  pocket,  and  Grace's  last 
words  in  his  heart;  soliloquizing  as  he  shut  the  gate, 
"  There,  now,  I  hope  Aunt  Sally  won't  go  to  praising  me ; 
for,  just  so  sure  as  she  does,  I  shall  have  it  all  to  do  over 
again." 


UNCLE   LOT  19 

James  was  right  in  his  apprehension.  Uncle  Lot  could 
be  privately  converted,  but  not  brought  to  open  confession  j 
and  when,  the  next  morning,  Aunt  Sally  remarked,  in  the 
kindness  of  her  heart,  — 

"  Well,  I  always  knew  you  would  come  to  like  James," 
Uncle  Lot  only  responded,  "  Who  said  I  did  like  him  ?  " 

"  But  I  'm  sure  you  seemed  to  like  him  last  night." 

"  Why,  I  could  n't  turn  him  out  o'  doors,  could  I  ?  I 
don't  think  nothin'  of  him  but  what  I  always  did." 

But  it  was  to  be  remarked  that  Uncle  Lot  contented 
himself  at  this  time  with  the  mere  general  avowal,  without 
running  it  into  particulars,  as  was  formerly  his  wont.  It 
was  evident  that  the  ice  had  begun  to  melt,  but  it  might 
have  been  a  long  time  in  dissolving,  had  not  collateral  in 
cidents  assisted. 

It  so  happened  that  about  this  time  George  Griswold, 
the  only  son  before  referred  to,  returned  to  his  native  vil 
lage,  after  having  completed  his  theological  studies  at  a 
neighboring  institution.  It  is  interesting  to  mark  the  grad 
ual  development  of  mind  and  heart,  from  the  time  that  the 
white-headed,  bashful  boy  quits  the  country  village  for  col 
lege,  to  the  period  when  he  returns,  a  formed  and  matured 
man ;  to  notice  how  gradually  the  rust  of  early  prejudices 
begins  to  cleave  from  him  —  how  his  opinions,  like  his 
handwriting,  pass  from  the  cramped  and  limited  forms  of  a 
country  school  into  that  confirmed  and  characteristic  style 
which  is  to  mark  the  man  for  life.  In  George  this  change 
was  remarkably  striking.  He  was  endowed  by  nature  with 
uncommon  acuteness  of  feeling  and  fondness  for  reflection  — 
qualities  as  likely  as  any  to  render  a  child  backward  and 
uninteresting  in  early  life. 

When  he  left  Newbury  for  college,  he  was  a  taciturn 
and  apparently  phlegmatic  boy,  only  evincing  sensibility  by 
blushing  and  looking  particularly  stupefied  whenever  any 
body  spoke  to  him.  Vacation  after  vacation  passed,  and 


20  UNCLE   LOT 

he  returned  more  and  more  an  altered  being ;  and  he  who 
once  shrank  from  the  eye  of  the  deacon,  and  was  ready  to 
sink  if  he  met  the  minister,  now  moved  about  among  the 
dignitaries  of  the  place  with  all  the  composure  of  a  superior 
being. 

It  was  only  to  be  regretted  that,  while  the  mind  improved, 
the  physical  energies  declined,  and  that  every  visit  to  his 
home  found  him  paler,  thinner,  and  less  prepared  in  body 
for  the  sacred  profession  to  which  he  had  devoted  himself. 
But  now  he  was  returned,  a  minister  —  a  real  minister, 
with  a  right  to  stand  in  the  pulpit  and  preach ;  and  what 
a  joy  and  glory  to  Aunt  Sally  —  and  to  Uncle  Lot,  if  he 
were  not  ashamed  to  own  it ! 

The  first  Sunday  after  he  came,  it  was  known  far  and 
near  that  George  Griswold  was  to  preach  ;  and  never  was 
a  more  ready  and  expectant  audience. 

As  the  time  for  reading  the  first  psalm  approached,  you 
might  see  the  white-headed  men  turning  their  faces  atten 
tively  towards  the  pulpit ;  the  anxious  and  expectant  old 
women,  with  their  little  black  bonnets,  bent  forward  to  see 
him  rise.  There  were  the  children  looking,  because  every 
body  else  looked ;  there  was  Uncle  Lot  in  the  front  pew, 
his  face  considerately  adjusted  ;  there  was  Aunt  Sally,  seem 
ing  as  pleased  as  a  mother  could  seem  ;  and  Miss  Grace, 
lifting  her  sweet  face  to  her  brother,  like  a  flower  to  the 
sun  ;  there  was  our  friend  James  in  the  front  gallery,  his 
joyous  countenance  a  little  touched  with  sobriety  and  ex 
pectation  ;  in  short,  a  more  embarrassingly  attentive  audi 
ence  never  greeted  the  first  effort  of  a  young  minister. 
Under  these  circumstances  there  was  something  touching  in 
the  fervent  self-forgetfulness  which  characterized  the  first 
exercises  of  the  morning  —  something  which  moved  every 
one  in  the  house. 

The  devout  poetry  of  his  prayer,  rich  with  the  Oriental 
ism  of  Scripture,  and  eloquent  with  the  expression  of  strong 


UNCLE   LOT  21 

yet  chastened  emotion,  breathed  over  his  audience  like  mu 
sic,  hushing  every  one  to  silence,  and  beguiling  every  one  to 
feeling.  In  the  sermon,  there  was  the  strong  intellectual 
nerve,  the  constant  occurrence  of  argument  and  statement, 
which  distinguishes  a  New  England  discourse  ;  but  it  was 
touched  with  life  by  the  intense,  yet  half-subdued,  feeling 
with  which  he  seemed  to  utter  it.  Like  the  rays  of  the 
sun,  it  enlightened  and  melted  at  the  same  moment. 

The  strong  peculiarities  of  New  England  doctrine,  involv 
ing,  as  they  do,  all  the  hidden  machinery  of  mind,  all  the 
mystery  of  its  divine  relations  and  future  progression,  and 
all  the  tremendous  uncertainties  of  its  eternal  good  or  ill, 
seemed  to  have  dwelt  in  his  mind,  to  have  burned  in  his 
thoughts,  to  have  wrestled  with  his  powers,  and  they  gave 
to  his  manner  the  fervency  almost  of  another  world  ;  while 
the  exceeding  paleness  of  his  countenance,  and  a  tremulous- 
ness  of  voice  that  seemed  to  spring  from  bodily  weakness, 
touched  the  strong  workings  of  his  mind  with  a  pathetic 
interest,  as  if  the  being  so  early  absorbed  in  another  world 
could  not  be  long  for  this. 

When  the  services  were  over,  the  congregation  dispersed 
with  the  air  of  people  who  had  felt  rather  than  heard  ;  and 
all  the  criticism  that  followed  was  similar  to  that  of  old  Dea 
con  Hart,  —  an  upright,  shrewd  man,  —  who,  as  he  lingered 
a  moment  at  the  church  door,  turned  and  gazed  with  un 
wonted  feeling  at  the  young  preacher. 

"He's  a  blessed  cre'tur  !  "  said  he,  the  tears  actually 
making  their  way  to  his  eyes  ;  "I  hain't  been  so  near  heaven 
this  many  a  day.  He  ?s  a  blessed  cre'tur  of  the  Lord ; 
that 's  my  mind  about  him  !  " 

As  for  our  friend  James,  he  was  at  first  sobered,  then 
deeply  moved,  and  at  last  wholly  absorbed  by  the  discourse  ; 
and  it  was  only  when  meeting  was  over  that  he  began  to 
think  where  he  really  was. 

With  all  his  versatile  activity,  James  had  a  greater  depth 


22  UNCLE  LOT 

of  mental  capacity  than  he  was  himself  aware  of,  and  he  be 
gan  to  feel  a  sort  of  electric  affinity  for  the  mind  that  had 
touched  him  in  a  way  so  new ;  and  when  he  saw  the  mild 
minister  standing  at  the  foot  of  the  pulpit  stairs,  he  made 
directly  towards  him. 

"  I  do  want  to  hear  more  from  you,"  said  he,  with  a  face 
full  of  earnestness  ;  "  may  I  walk  home  with  you  ?  " 

"  It  is  a  long  and  warm  walk,"  said  George,  smiling. 

"  Oh,  I  don't  care  for  that,  if  it  does  not  trouble  you" 
said  James  ;  and  leave  being  gained,  you  might  have  seen 
them  slowly  passing  along  under  the  trees,  James  pouring 
forth  all  the  floods  of  inquiry  which  the  sudden  impulse  of 
his  mind  had  brought  out,  and  supplying  his  guide  with  more 
questions  and  problems  for  solution  than  he  could  have  gone 
through  with  in  a  month. 

"  I  cannot  answer  all  your  questions  now,"  said  he,  as 
they  stopped  at  Uncle  Lot's  gate". 

"  Well,  then,  when  will  you  ? "  said  James  eagerly. 
"  Let  me  come  home  with  you  to-night  ?  " 

The  minister  smiled  assent,  and  James  departed,  so  full 
of  new  thoughts  that  he  passed  Grace  without  even  seeing 
her.  From  that  time  a  friendship  commenced  between  the 
two  which  was  a  beautiful  illustration  of  the  affinities  of 
opposites.  It  was  like  a  friendship  between  morning  and 
evening  —  all  freshness  and  sunshine  on  one  side,  and  all 
gentleness  and  peace  on  the  other. 

The  young  minister,  worn  by  long-continued  ill  health,  by 
the  fervency  of  his  own  feelings,  and  the  gravity  of  his  own 
reasonings,  found  pleasure  in  the  healthful  buoyancy  of  a 
youthful,  unexhausted  mind,  while  James  felt  himself  sobered 
and  made  better  by  the  moonlight  tranquillity  of  his  friend. 
It  is  one  mark  of  a  superior  mind  to  understand  and  be  in 
fluenced  by  the  superiority  of  others  ;  and  this  was  the  case 
with  James.  The  ascendancy  which  his  new  friend  acquired 
over  him  was  unlimited,  and  did  more  in  a  month  towards 


UNCLE   LOT  23 

consolidating  and  developing  his  character  than  all  the  four 
years'  course  of  a  college.  Our  religious  habits  are  likely 
always  to  retain  the  impression  of  the  first  seal  which  stamped 
them,  and  in  this  case  it  was  a  peculiarly  happy  one.  The 
calmness,  the  settled  purpose,  the  mild  devotion  of  his  friend, 
formed  a  just  alloy  to  the  energetic  and  reckless  buoyancy 
of  James's  character,  and  awakened  in  him  a  set  of  feelings 
without  which  the  most  vigorous  mind  must  be  incomplete. 
The  effect  of  the  ministrations  of  the  young  pastor,  in 
awakening  attention  to  the  subjects  of  his  calling  in  the  village, 
was  marked,  and  of  a  kind  which  brought  pleasure  to  his  own 
heart.  But,  like  all  other  excitement,  it  tends  to  exhaustion, 
and  it  was  not  long  before  he  sensibly  felt  the  decline  of  the 
powers  of  life.  To  the  best  regulated  mind  there  is  something 
bitter  in  the  relinquishment  of  projects  for  which  we  have 
been  long  and  laboriously  preparing,  and  there  is  something 
far  more  bitter  in  crossing  the  long-cherished  expectations  of 
friends.  All  this  George  felt.  He  could  not  bear  to  look  on 
his  mother,  hanging  on  his  words  and  following  his  steps  with 
eyes  of  almost  childish  delight — on  his  singular  father,  whose 
whole  earthly  ambition  was  bound  up  in  his  success,  and  think 
how  soon  the  "  candle  of  their  old  age  "  must  be  put  out. 
When  he  returned  from  a  successful  effort,  it  was  painful  to 
see  the  old  man,  so  evidently  delighted,  and  so  anxious  to  con 
ceal  his  triumph,  as  he  would  seat  himself  in  his  chair,  and 
begin  with,  "  George,  that  'ere  doctrine  is  rather  of  a  puzzler  ; 
but  you  seem  to  think  you  've  got  the  run  on't.  I  should  re'ly 
like  to  know  what  business  you  have  to  think  you  know  better 
than  other  folks  about  it ;  "  and,  though  he  would  cavil  most 
courageously  at  all  George's  explanations,  yet  you  might  per 
ceive,  through  all,  that  he  wras  inly  uplifted  to  hear  how  his 
boy  could  talk. 

If  George  was  engaged  in  argument  with  any  one  else,  he 
would  sit  by,  with  his  head  bowed  down,  looking  out  from 
under  his  shaggy  eyebrows  with  a  shamefaced  satisfaction 


24  UNCLE  LOT 

very  unusual  with  him.  Expressions  of  affection  from  the 
naturally  gentle  are  not  half  so  touching  as  those  which  are 
forced  out  from  the  hard-favored  and  severe ;  and  George  was 
affected,  even  to  pain,  by  the  evident  pride  and  regard  of  his 
father. 

"  He  never  said  so  much  to  anybody  before,"  thought  he, 
"  and  what  will  he  do  if  I  die  ?  " 

In  such  thoughts  as  these  Grace  found  her  brother  engaged 
one  still  autumn  morning,  as  he  stood  leaning  against  the 
garden  fence. 

"  What  are  you  solemnizing  here  for,  this  bright  day, 
brother  George  ? "  said  she,  as  she  bounded  down  the 
alley. 

The  young  man  turned,  and  looked  on  her  happy  face  with 
a  sort  of  twilight  smile. 

"  How  happy  you  are,  Grace  !  "  said  he. 

"  To  be  sure  I  am  ;  and  you  ought  to  be  too,  because  you 
are  better." 

"  I  am  happy,  Grace  —  that  is,  I  hope  I  shall  be." 

"  You  are  sick,  I  know  you  are,"  said  Grace  ;  "  you  look 
worn  out.  Oh,  I  wish  your  heart  could  spring  once,  as  mine 
does." 

"I  am  not  well,  dear  Grace,  and  I  fear  I  never  shall  be," 
said  he,  turning  away,  and  fixing  his  eyes  on  the  fading  trees 
opposite. 

"  Oh  George  !  dear  George,  don't,  don't  say  that,  you  '11 
break  all  our  hearts,"  said  Grace,  with  tears  in  her  own 
eyes. 

"  Yes,  but  it  is  true,  sister :  I  do  not  feel  it  on  my  own 
account  so  much  as —  However,"  he  added,  "it  will  all 
be  the  same  in  heaven." 

It  was  but  a  week  after  this  that  a  violent  cold  hastened 
the  progress  of  debility  into  a  confirmed  malady.  He  sunk 
very  fast.  Aunt  Sally,  with  the  self-deceit  of  a  fond  and 
cheerful  heart,  thought  every  day  that  "  he  would  be  bet- 


UNCLE   LOT  25 

ter,"  and  Uncle  Lot  resisted  conviction  with  all  the  ob 
stinate  pertinacity  of  his  character,  while  the  sick  man  felt 
that  he  had  not  the  heart  to  undeceive  them. 

James  was  now  at  the  house  every  day,  exhausting  all 
his  energy  and  invention  in  the  case  of  his  friend;  and  any 
one  who  had  seen  him  in  his  hours  of  recklessness  and  glee, 
could  scarcely  recognize  him  as  the  being  whose  step  was  so 
careful,  whose  eye  so  watchful,  whose  voice  and  touch  were 
so  gentle,  as  he  moved  around  the  sick-bed.  But  the  same 
quickness  which  makes  a  mind  buoyant  in  gladness  often 
makes  it  gentlest  and  most  sympathetic  in  sorrow. 

It  was  now  nearly  morning  in  the  sick-room.  George 
had  been  restless  and  feverish  all  night ;  but  towards  day 
he  fell  into  a  slight  slumber,  and  James  sat  by  his  side, 
almost  holding  his  breath  lest  he  should  waken  him.  It 
was  yet  dusk,  but  the  sky  was  brightening  with  a  solemn 
glow,  and  the  stars  were  beginning  to  disappear ;  all,  save 
the  bright  and  morning  one,  which,  standing  alone  in  the 
east,  looked  tenderly  through  the  casement,  like  the  eye  of 
our  Heavenly  Father,  watching  over  us  when  all  earthly 
friendships  are  fading. 

George  awoke  with  a  placid  expression  of  countenance, 
and  fixing  his  eyes  on  the  brightening  sky,  murmured 
faintly,  — 

"  The  sweet,  immortal  morning  sheds 
Its  blushes  round  the  spheres." 

A  moment  after,  a  shade  passed  over  his  face  ;  he  pressed 
his  fingers  over  his  eyes,  and  the  tears  dropped  silently  on 
his  pillow. 

"  George  !  dear  George ! "  said  James,  bending  over 
him. 

"  It 's  my  friends  —  it  7s  my  father  —  my  mother,"  said 
he  faintly. 

"  Jesus  Christ  will  watch  over  them,"  said  James  sooth 
ingly. 


26  UNCLE  LOT 

"  Oh,  yes,  I  know  He  will ;  for  He  loved  his  own  which 
were  in  the  world  ;  He  loved  them  unto  the  end.  But  I 
am  dying  —  and  before  I  have  done  any  good." 

"  Oh,  do  not  say  so/'  said  James ;  "  think,  think  what 
you  have  done,  if  only  for  me.  God  bless  you  for  it !  God 
will  bless  you  for  it ;  it  will  follow  you  to  heaven ;  it  will 
bring  me  there.  Yes,  I  will  do  as  you  have  taught  me. 
I  will  give  my  life,  my  soul,  my  whole  strength  to  it ;  and 
then  you  will  not  have  lived  in  vain." 

George  smiled,  and  looked  upward  ;  "  his  face  was  as 
that  of  an  angel ; "  and  James,  in  his  warmth,  continued,  — 

"  It  is  not  I  alone  who  can  say  this  ;  we  all  bless  you  ; 
every  one  in  his  place  blesses  you  ;  you  will  be  had  in  ever 
lasting  remembrance  by  some  hearts  here,  I  know.''* 

"  Bless  God  !  "  said  George. 

"  We  do,"  said  James.  "  I  bless  him  that  I  ever  knew 
you;  we  all  bless  him,  and  we  love  you,  and  shall  for 
ever." 

The  glow  that  had  kindled  over  the  pale  face  of  the 
invalid  again  faded  as  he  said,  — 

"  But,  James,  I  must  —  I  ought  to  —  tell  my  father  and 
mother  ;  I  ought  to,  and  how  can  I  ?  " 

At  that  moment  the  door  opened,  and  Uncle  Lot  made 
his  appearance.  He  seemed  struck  with  the  paleness  of 
George's  face  ;  and  coming  to  the  side  of  the  bed,  he  felt 
his  pulse,  and  laid  his  hand  anxiously  on  his  forehead,  and, 
clearing  his  voice  several  times,  inquired  "  if  he  did  n't  feel 
a  little  better." 

"  No,  father,"  said  George  ;  then  taking  his  hand,  he 
looked  anxiously  in  his  face,  and  seemed  to  hesitate  a  mo 
ment.  "  Father,"  he  began,  "  you  know  that  we  ought  to 
submit  to  God." 

There  was  something  in  his  expression  at  this  moment 
which  flashed  the  truth  into  the  old  man's  mind.  He 
dropped  his  son's  hand  with  an  exclamation  of  agony,  and, 
turning  quickly,  left  the  room. 


UNCLE   LOT  27 

"  Father  !  father !  "  said  Grace,  trying  to  rouse  him,  as 
he  stood  with  his  arms  folded  by  the  kitchen  window. 

"  Get  away,  child  !  "  said  he  roughly. 

a  Father,  mother  says  breakfast  is  ready." 

"  I  don't  want  any  breakfast,7'  said  he,  turning  short  about. 
"  Sally,  what  are  you  fixing  in  that  'ere  porringer  ?  " 

"  Oh,  it 's  only  a  little  tea  for  George  ;  't  will  comfort  him 
up,  and  make  him  feel  better,  poor  fellow." 

"  You  won't  make  him  feel  better  —  he's  gone,"  said 
Uncle  Lot  hoarsely. 

"  Oh,  cTear  heart,  no  !  "  said  Aunt  Sally. 

"Be  still  a-contradicting  me  ;  I  won't  be  contradicted 
all  the  time  by  nobody.  The  short  of  the  case  is,  that 
George  is  goin'  to  die  just  as  we  've  got  him  ready  to  be  a 
minister  and  all ;  and  I  wish  to  pity  I  was  in  my  grave 
myself,  and  so  " —  said  Uncle  Lot,  as  he  plunged  out  of  the 
door,  and  shut  it  after  him. 

It  is  well  for  a  man  that  there  is  one  Being  who  sees 
the  suffering  heart  as  it  is,  and  not  as  it  manifests  itself 
through  the  repellances  of  outward  infirmity,  and  who,  per 
haps,  feels  more  for  the  stern  and  wayward  than  for  those 
whose  gentler  feelings  win  for  them  human  sympathy.  With 
all  his  singularities,  there  was  in  the  heart  of  Uncle  Lot  a 
depth  of  religious  sincerity  ;  but  there  are  few  characters 
where  religion  does  anything  more  than  struggle  with  nat 
ural  defect,  and  modify  what  would  else  be  far  worse. 

In  this  hour  of  trial,  all  the  native  obstinacy  and  perti 
nacity  of  the  old  man's  character  rose,  and  while  he  felt 
the  necessity  of  submission,  it  seemed  impossible  to  submit ; 
and  thus  reproaching  himself,  struggling  in  vain  to  repress 
the  murmurs  of  nature,  repulsing  from  him  all  external 
sympathy,  his  mind  was  "  tempest  -  tossed,  and  not  com 
forted." 

It  was  on  the  still  afternoon  of  the  following  Sabbath 
that  he  was  sent  for,  in  haste,  to  the  chamber  of  his  son. 


28  UNCLE   LOT 

He  entered,  and  saw  that  the  hour  was  come.  The  fam 
ily  were  all  there.  Grace  and  James,  side  by  side,  bent 
over  the  dying  one,  and  his  mother  sat  afar  off,  with  her 
face  hid  in  her  apron,  "  that  she  might  not  see  the  death  of 
the  child."  The  aged  minister  was  there,  and  the  Bible 
lay  open  before  him.  The  father  walked  to  the  side  of  the 
bed.  He  stood  still,  and  gazed  on  the  face  now  brighten 
ing  with  "  life  and  immortality."  The  son  lifted  up  his 
eyes ;  he  saw  his  father,  smiled,  and  put  out  his  hand. 

"  I  am  glad  you  are  come,"  said  he. 

"  0  George,  to  the  pity,  don't !  don't  smile  on  me  so !  I 
know  what  is  coming ;  I  have  tried,  and  tried,  and  I  can't, 
I  can't  have  it  so ;  "  and  his  frame  shook,  and  he  sobbed 
audibly.  The  room  was  still  as  death  ;  there  was  none  that 
seemed  able  to  comfort  him.  At  last  the  son  repeated,  in 
a  sweet,  but  interrupted  voice,  those  words  of  man's  best 
Friend  :  "  Let  not  your  heart  be  troubled  ;  in  my  Father's 
house  are  many  mansions." 

"  Yes  ;  but  I  can't  help  being  troubled ;  I  suppose  the 
Lord's  will  must  be  done,  but  it  '11  kill  me." 

"  0  father,  don't,  don't  break  my  heart,"  said  the  son, 
much  agitated.  "  I  shall  see  you  again  in  heaven,  and  you 
shall  see  me  again  ;  and  then  'your  heart  shall  rejoice,  and 
your  joy  no  man  taketh  from  you.' ': 

"  I  never  shall  get  to  heaven  if  I  feel  as  I  do  now," 
said  the  old  man.  "  I  cannot  have  it  so." 

The  mild  face  of  the  sufferer  was  overcast.  "  I  wish  he 
saw  all  that  I  do,"  said  he,  in  a  low  voice.  Then  looking 
towards  the  minister,  he  articulated,  "  Pray  for  us." 

They  knelt  in  prayer.  It  was  soothing,  as  real  prayer 
always  must  be  ;  and  when  they  rose,  every  one  seemed 
more  calm.  But  the  sufferer  was  exhausted  ;  his  counte 
nance  changed  ;  he  looked  on  his  friends  ;  there  was  a  faint 
whisper,  "  Peace  I  leave  with  you "  —  and  he  was  in 
heaven. 


UNCLE  LOT  29 

We  need  not  dwell  on  what  followed.  The  seed  sown 
by  the  righteous  often  blossoms  over  their  grave ;  and  so 
was  it  with  this  good  man.  The  words  of  peace  which  he 
spoke  unto  his  friends  while  he  was  yet  with  them  came 
into  remembrance  after  he  was  gone  ;  and  though  he  was 
laid  in  the  grave  with  many  tears,  yet  it  was  with  softened 
and  submissive  hearts. 

"  The  Lord  bless  him,"  said  Uncle  Lot,  as  he  and  James 
were  standing,  last  of  all,  over  the  grave.  "  I  believe  my 
heart  is  gone  to  heaven  with  him ;  and  I  think  the  Lord 
really  did  know  what  was  best  after  all." 

Our  friend  James  seemed  now  to  become  the  support  of 
the  family  ;  and  the  bereaved  old  man  unconsciously  began 
to  transfer  to  him  the  affections  that  had  been  left  vacant. 

"  James,"  said  he  to  him  one  day,  "  I  suppose  you  know 
that  you  are  about  the  same  to  me  as  a  son." 

"  I  hope  so,"  said  James  kindly. 

"  Well,  well,  you  '11  go  to  college  next  week,  and  none 
o'  y'r  keepin'  school  to  get  along.  I  ?ve  got  enough  to 
bring  you  safe  out  —  that  is,  if  you  '11  be  car'ful  and  stiddy." 

James  knew  the  heart  too  well  to  refuse  a  favor  in  which 
the  poor  old  man's  mind  was  comforting  itself.  He  had  the 
self-command  to  abstain  from  any  extraordinary  expressions 
of  gratitude,  but  took  it  kindly,  as  a  matter  of  course. 

"  Dear  Grace,"  said  he  to  her,  the  last  evening  before  he 
left  home,  "  I  am  changed  ;  we  both  are  altered  since  we 
first  knew  each  other ;  and  now  I  am  going  to  be  gone  a 
long  time,  but  I  am  sure  "  — 

He  stopped  to  arrange  his  thoughts. 

"  Yes,  you  may  be  sure  of  all  those  things  that  you  wish 
to  say,  and  cannot,"  said  Grace. 

"  Thank  you,"  said  James ;  then,  looking  thoughtfully, 
he  added,  "  God  help  me.  I  believe  I  have  mind  enough 
to  be  what  I  mean  to ;  but  whatever  I  am  or  have  shall  be 
given  to  God  and  my  fellow  men  ;  and  then,  Grace,  your 
brother  in  heaven  will  rejoice  over  me." 


30  UNCLE  LOT 

"  I  believe  he  does  now/7  said  Grace.  "  God  bless  you, 
James ;  I  don't  know  what  would  have  become  of  us  if 
you  had  not  been  here. 

"  Yes,  you  will  live  to  be  like  him,  and  to  do  even  more 
good/'  she  added,  her  face  brightening  as  she  spoke,  till 
James  thought  she  really  must  be  right. 

It  was  five  years  after  this  that  James  was  spoken  of  as 
an  eloquent  and  successful  minister  in  the  state  of  C.,  and 
was  settled  in  one  of  its  most  thriving  villages.  Late  one 
autumn  evening,  a  tall,  bony,  hard-favored  man  was  observed 
making  his  way  into  the  outskirts  of  the  place. 

"  Hallo,  there  ! "  he  called  to  a  man  over  the  other  side 
of  a  fence  ;  "  what  town  is  these  'ere  ?  " 

"  It 's  Farmington,  sir." 

"Well,  I  want  to  know  if  you  know  anything  of  a  boy 
of  mine  that  lives  here  ?  " 

"  A  boy  of  yours  ?     Who  ?  " 

"  Why,  I  've  got  a  boy  here,  that 's  livin'  on  the  town, 
and  I  thought  I  'd  jest  look  him  up." 

"I  don't  know  any  boy  that  is  living  on  the  town. 
What 's  his  name  ?  " 

"  Why,"  said  the  old  man,  pushing  his  hat  off  from  his 
forehead,  "  I  believe  they  call  him  James  Benton." 

"  James  Benton  !      Why,  that  is  our  minister's  name  !  " 

"  Oh,  wal,  I  believe  he  is  the  minister,  come  to  think  on't. 
He  's  a  boy  o'  mine,  though.  Where  does  he  live  ?  " 

"  In  that  white  house  that  you  see  set  back  from  the  road 
there,  with  all  those  trees  round  it." 

At  this  instant  a  tall,  manly-looking  person  approached 
from  behind.  Have  we  not  seen  that  face  before  ?  It 
is  a  touch  graver  than  of  old,  and  its  lines  have  a  more 
thoughtful  significance  ;  but  all  the  vivacity  of  James  Ben- 
ton  sparkles  in  that  quick  smile  as  his  eye  falls  on  the  old 
man. 


UNCLE  LOT  31 

"  I  thought  you  could  not  keep  away  from  us  long,"  said 
he  with  the  prompt  cheerfulness  of  his  boyhood,  and  laying 
hold  of  both  of  Uncle  Lot's  hard  hands. 

They  approached  the  gate  ;  a  bright  face  glances  past 
the  window,  and  in  a  moment  Grace  is  at  the  door. 

"  Father !   dear  father  !  " 

"  You'd  better  make  believe  be  so  glad,"  said  Uncle  Lot, 
his  eyes  glistening  as  he  spoke. 

"  Come,  come,  father,  I  have  authority  in  these  days," 
said  Grace,  drawing  him  towards  the  house ;  "  so  no  dis 
respectful  speeches  ;  away  with  your  hat  and  coat,  and  sit 
down  in  this  great  chair." 

"  So,  ho !  Miss  Grace,"  said  Uncle  Lot,  "  you  are  at  your 
old  tricks,  ordering  round  as  usual.  Well,  if  I  must,  I 
must ;  "  so  down  he  sat. 

"  Father,"  said  Grace,  as  he  was  leaving  them,  after  a  few 
days'  stay,  "  it 's  Thanksgiving  Day  next  month,  and  you 
and  mother  must  come  and  stay  with  us." 

Accordingly,  the  following  month  found  Aunt  Sally  and 
Uncle  Lot  by  the  minister's  fireside,  delighted  witnesses 
of  the  Thanksgiving  presents  which  a  willing  people  were 
pouring  in ;  and  the  next  day  they  had  once  more  the  pleas 
ure  of  seeing  a  son  of  theirs  in  the  sacred  desk,  and  hear 
ing  a  sermon  that  everybody  said  was  "  the  best  that  he 
ever  preached  ;  "  and  it  is  to  be  remarked,  that  this  was  the 
standing  commentary  on  all  James's  discourses,  so  that  it 
was  evident  he  was  going  on  unto  perfection. 

"There's  a  great  deal  that's  worth  having  in  this  'ere 
life  after  all,"  said  Uncle  Lot,  as  he  sat  by  the  coals  of  the 
bright  evening  fire  of  that  day  ;  "  that  is,  if  we  'd  only  take 
it  when  the  Lord  lays  it  in  our  way." 

"  Yes,"  said  James  ;  "  and  let  us  only  take  it  as  we 
should  and  this  life  will  be  cheerfulness,  and  the  next  full 
ness  of  joy." 


LOVE   VERSUS   LAW 

How  many  kinds  of  beauty  there  are !  How  many  even 
in  the  human  form  !  There  are  the  bloom  and  motion  of 
childhood,  the  freshness  and  ripe  perfection  of  youth,  the 
dignity  of  manhood,  the  softness  of  woman  —  all  different, 
yet  each  in  its  kind  perfect. 

But  there  is  none  so  peculiar,  none  that  bears  more  the 
image  of  the  heavenly,  than  the  beauty  of  Christian  old  age. 
It  is  like  the  loveliness  of  those  calm  autumn  days,  when 
the  heats  of  summer  are  past,  when  the  harvest  is  gathered 
into  the  garner,  and  the  sun  shines  over  the  placid  fields 
and  fading  woods,  which  stand  waiting  for  their  last  change. 
It  is  a  beauty  more  strictly  moral,  more  belonging  to  the 
soul,  than  that  of  any  other  period  of  life.  Poetic  fiction 
always  paints  the  old  man  as  a  Christian  ;  nor  is  there  any 
period  where  the  virtues  of  Christianity  seem  to  find  a  more 
harmonious  development.  The  aged  man,  who  has  outlived 
the  hurry  of  passion  —  who  has  withstood  the  urgency  of 
temptation  —  who  has  concentrated  the  religious  impulses 
of  youth  into  habits  of  obedience  and  love  —  who,  having 
served  his  generation  by  the  will  of  God,  now  leans  in 
helplessness  on  Him  whom  once  he  served,  is,  perhaps,  one 
of  the  most  faultless  representations  of  the  beauty  of  holi 
ness  that  this  world  affords. 

Thoughts  something  like  these  arose  in  my  mind  as  I 
slowly  turned  my  footsteps  from  the  graveyard  of  my  native 
village,  where  I  had  been  wandering  after  years  of  absence. 
It  was  a  lovely  spot  —  a  soft  slope  of  ground  close  by  a  little 
stream,  that  ran  sparkling  through  the  cedars  and  junipers 


LOVE   VERSUS   LAW  33 

beyond  it,  while  on  the  other  side  arose  a  green  hill,  with 
the  white  village  laid  like  a  necklace  of  pearls  upon  its 
bosom. 

There  is  no  feature  of  the  landscape  more  picturesque  and 
peculiar  than  that  of  the  graveyard,  —  that  "  city  of  the 
silent,"  as  it  is  beautifully  expressed  by  the  Orientals,  — 
standing  amid  the  bloom  and  rejoicing  of  nature,  its  white 
stones  glittering  in  the  sun,  a  memorial  of  decay,  a  link 
between  the  living  and  the  dead. 

As  I  moved  slowly  from  mound  to  mound,  and  read  the 
inscriptions,  which  purported  that  many  a  money-saving 
man,  and  many  a  busy,  anxious  housewife,  and  many  a 
prattling,  half-blossomed  child,  had  done  with  care  or  mirth, 
I  was  struck  with  a  plain  slab,  bearing  the  inscription, 
"  To  the  memory  of  Deacon  Enos  Dudley,  who  died  in 
his  hundredth  year."  My  eye  was  caught  by  this  inscrip 
tion,  for  in  other  years  I  had  well  known  the  person  it 
recorded.  At  this  instant,  his  mild  and  venerable  form 
arose  before  me  as  erst  it  used  to  rise  from  the  deacon's 
seat,  a  straight,  close  slip  just  below  the  pulpit.  I  recollect 
his  quiet  and  lowly  coming  into  meeting,  precisely  ten  min 
utes  before  the  time,  every  Sunday,  —  his  tall  form  a  little 
stooping,  —  his  best  suit  of  butternut-colored  Sunday  clothes, 
with  long  flaps  and  wide  cuffs,  on  one  of  which  two  pins 
were  always  to  be  seen  stuck  in  with  the  most  reverent 
precision.  When  seated,  the  top  of  the  pew  came  just  to 
his  chin,  so  that  his  silvery,  placid  head  rose  above  it  like 
the  moon  above  the  horizon.  His  head  was  one  that  might 
have  been  sketched  for  a  St.  John  —  bald  at  the  top  and 
around  the  temples  adorned  with  a  soft  flow  of  bright  fine 
hair,  — 

"  That  down  his  shoulders  reverently  spread, 
As  hoary  frost  with  spangles  doth  attire 
The  naked  branches  of  an  oak  half  dead." 

He  was  then  of  great  age,  and  every  line  of  his  patient  face 


34  LOVE   VERSUS   LAW 

seemed  to  say,  "  And  now,  Lord,  what  wait  I  for  ?  "  Yet 
still,  year  after  year,  was  he  to  be  seen  in  the  same  place, 
with  the  same  dutiful  punctuality. 

The  services  he  offered  to  his  God  were  all  given  with 
the  exactness  of  an  ancient  Israelite.  No  words  could  have 
persuaded  him  of  the  propriety  of  meditating  when  the 
choir  was  singing,  or  of  sitting  down,  even  through  infirm 
ity,  before  the  close  of  the  longest  prayer  that  ever  was 
offered.  A  mighty  contrast  was  he  to  his  fellow  officer, 
Deacon  Abrams,  a  tight,  little,  tripping,  well-to-do  man, 
who  used  to  sit  beside  him  with  his  hair  brushed  straight 
up  like  a  little  blaze,  his  coat  buttoned  up  trig  and  close, 
his  psalm-book  in  hand,  and  his  quick  gray  eyes  turned 
first  on  one  side  of  the  broad  aisle,  and'  then  on  the  other, 
and  then  up  into  the  gallery,  like  a  man  who  came  to 
church  on  business,  and  felt  responsible  for  everything  that 
was  going  on  in  the  house. 

A  great  hindrance  was  the  business  talent  of  'this  good 
little  man  to  the  enjoyments  of  us  youngsters,  who,  perched 
along  in  a  row  on  a  low  seat  in  front  of  the  pulpit,  at 
tempted  occasionally  to  diversify  the  long  hour  of  sermon 
by  sundry  small  exercises  of  our  own,  such  as  making  our 
handkerchiefs  into  rabbits,  or  exhibiting,  in  a  sly  way,  the 
apples  and  gingerbread  we  had  brought  for  a  Sunday  dinner, 
or  pulling  the  ears  of  some  discreet  meeting-going  dog,  who 
now  and  then  would  soberly  pitapat  through  the  broad 
aisle.  But  woe  be  to  us  during  our  contraband  sports,  if 
we  saw  Deacon  Abrams' s  sleek  head  dodging  up  from  be 
hind  the  top  of  the  deacon's  seat.  Instantly  all  the  apples, 
gingerbread,  and  handkerchiefs  vanished,  and  we  all  sat  with 
our  hands  folded,  looking  as  demure  as  if  we  understood 
every  word  of  the  sermon,  and  more  too. 

There  was  a  great  contrast  between  these  two  deacons  in 
their  services  and  prayers,  when,  as  was  often  the  case,  the 
absence  of  the  pastor  devolved  on  them  the  burden  of  con- 


LOVE   VERSUS   LAW  35 

ducting  the  duties  of  the  sanctuary.  That  God  was  great 
and  good,  and  that  we  all  were  sinners,  were  truths  that 
seemed  to  have  melted  into  the  heart  of  Deacon  Enos,  so 
that  his  very  soul  and  spirit  were  bowed  down  with  them. 
With  Deacon  Abrams  it  was  an  undisputed  fact,  which  he 
had  settled  long  ago,  and  concerning  which  he  felt  that 
there  could  be  no  reasonable  doubt,  and  his  bustling  way  of 
dealing  with  the  matter  seemed  to  say  that  he  knew  that 
and  a  great  many  things  besides. 

Deacon  Enos  was  known  far  and  near  as  a  very  proverb 
for  peacefulness  of  demeanor  and  unbounded  charitableness 
in  covering  and  excusing  the  faults  of  others.  As  long  as 
there  was  any  doubt  in  a  case  of  alleged  evil  doing,  Deacon 
Enos  guessed  "  the  man  did  not  mean  any  harm,  after  all ;  " 
and  when  transgression  became  too  barefaced  for  this  excuse, 
he  always  guessed  "  it  wa'n't  best  to  say  much  about  it ; 
nobody  could  tell  what  they  might  be  left  to." 

Some  incidents  in  his  life  will  show  more  clearly  these 
traits.  A  certain  shrewd  landholder,  by  the  name  of  Jones, 
who  was  not  well  reported  of  in  the  matter  of  honesty,  sold 
to  Deacon  Enos  a  valuable  lot  of  land,  and  received  the 
money  for  it ;  but,  under  various  pretenses,  deferred  giving 
the  deed.  Soon  after,  he  died ;  and,  to  the  deacon's  amaze 
ment,  the  deed  was  nowhere  to  be  found,  while  this  very 
lot  of  land  was  left  by  will  to  one  of  his  daughters. 

The  deacon  said  "  it  was  very  extraor'nary  :  he  always 
knew  that  Seth  Jones  was  considerable  sharp  about  money, 
but  he  did  not  think  he  would  do  such  a  right  up-and- 
down  wicked  thing."  So  the  old  man  repaired  to  Squire 
Abel  to  state  the  case,  and  see  if  there  was  any  redress.  "  I 
kinder  hate  to  tell  of  it,"  said  he ;  "  but,  Squire  Abel,  you 
know  Mr.  Jones  was  —  was — what  he  was,  even  if  he  is  dead 
and  gone !  "  This  was  the  nearest  approach  the  old  gentle 
man  could  make  to  specifying  a  heavy  charge  against  the 
dead.  On  being  told  that  the  case  admitted  of  no  redress, 


36  LOVE   VERSUS   LAW 

Deacon  Enos  comforted  himself  with  half  soliloquizing,  — 
"  Well,  at  any  rate,  the  land  has  gone  to  those  two  girls,  poor 
lone  critters ;  I  hope  it  will  do  them  some  good.  There 
is  Silence  —  we  won't  say  much  about  her ;  but  Sukey  is  a 
nice,  pretty  girl."  And  so  the  old  man  departed,  leaving 
it  as  his  opinion  that,  since  the  matter  could  not  be  mended, 
it  was  just  as  well  not  to  say  anything  about  it. 

Now,  the  two  girls  here  mentioned  (to  wit,  Silence  and 
Sukey)  were  the  eldest  and  the  youngest  of  a  numerous 
family,  the  offspring  of  three  wives  of  Seth  Jones,  of  whom 
these  two  were  the  sole  survivors.  The  elder,  Silence,  was 
a  tall,  strong,  black-eyed,  hard-featured  woman,  verging 
upon  forty,  with  a  good,  loud,  resolute  voice,  and  what  the 
Irishman  would  call  "  a  dacent  notion  of  using  it."  Why 
she  was  called  Silence  was  a  standing  problem  to  the  neigh 
borhood  ;  for  she  had  more  faculty  and  inclination  for  mak 
ing  a  noise  than -any  person  in  the  whole  township.  Miss 
Silence  was  one  of  those  persons  who  have  no  disposition  to 
yield  any  of  their  own  rights.  She  marched  up  to  all  con 
troverted  matters,  faced  down  all  opposition,  held  her  way 
lustily  and  with  good  courage,  making  men,  women,  and 
children  turn  out  for  her,  as  they  would  for  a  mail  stage. 
So  evident  was  her  innate  determination  to  be  free  and  in 
dependent  that,  though  she  was  the  daughter  of  a  rich  man, 
and  well  portioned,  only  one  swain  was  ever  heard  of  who 
ventured  to  solicit  her  hand  in  marriage ;  and  he  was  sent 
off  with  the  assurance  that,  if  he  ever  showed  his  face  about 
the  house  again,  she  would  set  the  dogs  on  him. 

But  Susan  Jones  was  as  different  from  her  sister  as  the 
little  graceful  convolvulus  from  the  great  rough  stick  that 
supports  it.  At  the  time  of  which  we  speak  she  was  just 
eighteen ;  a  modest,  slender,  blushing  girl,  as  timid  and 
shrinking  as  her  sister  was  bold  and  hardy.  Indeed,  the 
education  of  poor  Susan  had  cost  Miss  Silence  much  pains 
taking  and  trouble,  and,  after  all,  she  said  "  the  girl  would 


LOVE   VERSUS   LAW  37 

make  a  fool  of  herself ;  she  never  could  teach  her  to  be  up 
and  down  with  people,  as  she  was." 

When  the  report  came  to  Miss  Silence's  ears  that  Deacon 
Enos  considered  himself  as  aggrieved  by  her  father's  will, 
she  held  forth  upon  the  subject  with  great  strength  of  cour 
age  and  of  lungs.  "  Deacon  Enos  might  be  in  better  busi 
ness  than  in  trying  to  cheat  orphans  out  of  their  rights  — 
she  hoped  he  would  go  to  law  about  it,  and  see  what  good 
he  would  get  by  it  —  a  pretty  church  member  and  deacon, 
to  be  sure !  getting  up  such  a  story  about  her  poor  father, 
dead  and  gone ! 

"  But,  Silence,"  said  Susan,  "  Deacon  Enos  is  a  good 
man :  I  do  not  think  he  means  to  injure  any  one  ;  there 
must  be  some  mistake  about  it." 

"  Susan,  you  are  a  little  fool,  as  I  have  always  told  you," 
replied  Silence  ;  "  you  would  be  cheated  out  of  your  eye 
teeth  if  you  had  not  me  to  take  care  of  you." 

But  subsequent  events  brought  the  affairs  of  these  two 
damsels  in  closer  connection  with  those  of  Deacon  Enos,  as 
we  shall  proceed  to  show. 

It  happened  that  the  next-door  neighbor  of  Deacon  Enos 
was  a  certain  old  farmer,  whose  crabbedness  of  demeanor 
had  procured  for  him  the  name  of  Uncle  Jaw.  This  agree 
able  surname  accorded  very  well  with  the  general  character 
istics  both  of  the  person  and  manner  of  its  possessor.  He 
was  tall  and  hard-favored,  with  an  expression  of  countenance 
much  resembling  a  northeast  rainstorm  —  a  drizzling,  set 
tled  sulkiness,  that  seemed  to  defy  all  prospect  of  clearing 
off,  and  to  take  comfort  in  its  own  disagreeableness.  His 
voice  seemed  to  have  taken  lessons  of  his  face,  in  such 
admirable  keeping  was  its  sawing,  deliberate  growl  with 
the  pleasing  physiognomy  before  indicated.  By  nature  he 
was  endowed  with  one  of  those  active,  acute,  hair-splitting 
minds,  which  can  raise  forty  questions  for  dispute  on  any 
point  of  the  compass  ;  and  had  he  been  an  educated  man, 


38  LOVE   VERSUS   LAW 

he  might  have  proved  as  clever  a  metaphysician  as  ever 
threw  dust  in  the  eyes  of  succeeding  generations.  But  being 
deprived  of  these  advantages,  he  nevertheless  exerted  him 
self  to  quite  as  useful  a  purpose  in  puzzling  and  mystifying 
whomsoever  came  in  his  way.  But  his  activity  particularly 
exercised  itself  in  the  line  of  the  law,  as  it  was  his  meat,  and 
drink,  and  daily  meditation,  either  to  find  something  to  go 
to  law  about  or  to  go  to  law  about  something  he  had  found. 
There  was  always  some  question  about  an  old  rail  fence  that 
used  to  run  "  a  leetle  more  to  the  left  hand,"  or  that  was 
built  up  "  a  leetle  more  to  the  right  hand,"  and  so  cut  off  a 
strip  of  his  "  medder  land,"  or  else  there  was  some  outrage 
of  Peter  Somebody's  turkeys  getting  into  his  mowing,  or 
Squire  Moses's  geese  were  to  be  shut  up  in  the  town  pound, 
or  something  equally  important  kept  him  busy  from  year's 
end  to  year's  end.  Now,  as  a  matter  of  private  amusement, 
this  might  have  answered  very  well ;  but  then  Uncle  Jaw 
was  not  satisfied  to  fight  his  own  battles,  but  must  needs 
go  from  house  to  house,  narrating  the  whole  length  and 
breadth  of  the  case,  with  all  the  "  says  he's  "  and  "  says 
I's,"  and  the  "I  tell'd  him's"  and  "he  tell'd  me's," 
which  do  either  accompany  or  flow  therefrom.  Moreover, 
he  had  such  a  marvelous  facility  of  finding  out  matters  to 
quarrel  about,  and  of  letting  every  one  else  know  where 
they,  too,  could  muster  a  quarrel,  that  he  generally  suc 
ceeded  in  keeping  the  whole  neighborhood  by  the  ears. 

And  as  good  Deacon  Enos  assumed  the  office  of  peace 
maker  for  the  village,  Uncle  Jaw's  efficiency  rendered  it  no 
sinecure.  The  deacon  always  followed  the  steps  of  Uncle 
Jaw,  smoothing,  hushing  up,  and  putting  matters  aright 
with  an  assiduity  that  was  truly  wonderful. 

Uncle  Jaw  himself  had  a  great  respect  for  the  good  man, 
and,  in  common  with  all  the  neighborhood,  sought  unto 
him  for  counsel,  though,  like  other  seekers  of  advice,  he 
appropriated  only  so  much  as  seemed  good  in  his  own  eyes. 


LOVE   VERSUS  LAW  39 

Still  he  took  a  kind  of  pleasure  in  dropping  in  of  an  even 
ing  to  Deacon  Enos's  fire,  to  recount  the  various  matters 
which  he  had  taken  or  was  to  take  in  hand ;  at  one  time  to 
narrate  "  how  he  had  been  over  the  milldam,  telling  old 
Granny  Clark  that  she  could  get  the  law  of  Seth  Scran 
about  that  pasture  lot,"  or  else  "  how  he  had  told  Ziah 
Bacon's  widow  that  she  had  a  right  to  shut  up  Bill  Scran- 
ton's  pig  every  time  she  caught  him  in  front  of  her  house." 

But  the  grand  "  matter  of  matters,"  and  the  one  that 
took  up  the  most  of  Uncle  Jaw's  spare  time,  lay  in  a  dis 
pute  between  him  and  Squire  Jones,  the  father  of  Susan 
and  Silence  ;  for  it  so  happened  that  his  lands  and  those  of 
Uncle  Jaw  were  contiguous.  Now,  the  matter  of  dispute 
was  on  this  wise :  On  Squire  Jones's  land  there  was  a  mill, 
which  mill  Uncle  Jaw  averred  was  "  always  a-flooding  his 
medder  land."  As  Uncle  Jaw's  "  medder  land "  was  by 
nature  half  bog  and  bulrushes,  and  therefore  liable  to  be 
found  in  a  wet  condition,  there  was  always  a  happy  obscurity 
as  to  where  the  water  came  from,  and  whether  there  was  at 
any  time  more  there  than  belonged  to  his  share.  So,  when 
all  other  subject  matters  of  dispute  failed,  Uncle  Jaw  re 
created  himself  with  getting  up  a  lawsuit  about  his  "  medder 
land ;  "  and  one  of  these  cases  was  in  pendency  when,  by 
the  death  of  the  squire,  the  estate  was  left  to  Susan  and 
Silence,  his  daughters.  When,  therefore,  the  report  reached 
him  that  Deacon  Enos  had  been  cheated  out  of  his  dues, 
Uncle  Jaw  prepared  forthwith  to  go  and  compare  notes. 
Therefore,  one  evening,  as  Deacon  Enos  was  sitting  quietly 
by  the  fire,  musing  and  reading  with  his  big  Bible  open  be 
fore  him,  he  heard  the  premonitory  symptoms  of  a  visitation 
from  Uncle  Jaw  on  his  door-scraper ;  and  soon  the  man 
made  his  appearance.  After  seating  himself  directly  in 
front  of  the  fire,  with  his  elbows  on  his  knees,  and  his  hands 
spread  out  over  the  coals,  he  looked  up  in  Deacon  Enos's 
mild  face  with  his  little  inquisitive  gray  eyes,  and  remarked, 


40  LOVE   VERSUS   LAW 

by  way  of  opening  the  subject,  u  Well,  deacon,  old  Squire 
Jones  is  gone  at  last.  I  wonder  how  much  good  all  his  land 
will  do  him  now  ?  " 

"  Yes,"  replied  Deacon  Enos,  "  it  just  shows  how  all 
these  things  are  not  worth  striving  after.  We  brought 
nothing  into  the  world,  and  it  is  certain  we  can  carry  no 
thing  out." 

"  Why,  yes,"  replied  Uncle  Jaw,  "  that  's  all  very  right, 
deacon ;  but  it  was  strange  how  that  old  Squire  Jones  did 
hang  on  to  things.  Now,  that  mill  of  his,  that  was  always 
soaking  off  water  into  these  medders  of  mine  —  I  took  and 
tell'd  Squire  Jones  just  how  it  was,  pretty  nigh  twenty 
times,  and  yet  he  would  keep  it  just  so ;  and  now  he  's 
dead  and  gone,  there  is  that  old  gal  Silence  is  full  as  bad, 
and  makes  more  noise ;  and  she  and  Suke  have  got  the 
land ;  but,  you  see,  I  mean  to  work  it  yet." 

Here  Uncle  Jaw  paused  to  see  whether  he  had  produced 
any  sympathetic  excitement  in  Deacon  Enos ;  but  the  old 
man  sat  without  the  least  emotion,  quietly  contemplating  the 
top  of  the  long  kitchen  shovel.  Uncle  Jaw  fidgeted  in  his 
chair,  and  changed  his  mode  of  attack  for  one  more  direct. 
"  I  heard  'em  tell,  Deacon  Enos,  that  the  squire  served  you 
something  of  an  unhandy  sort  of  trick  about  that  'ere  lot  of 
land." 

Still  Deacon  Enos  made  no  reply  ;  but  Uncle  Jaw's  per 
severance  was  not  so  to  be  put  off,  and  he  recommenced. 
"  'Squire  Abel,  you  see,  he  tell'd  me  how  the  matter  was, 
and  he  said  he  did  not  see  as  it  could  be  mended ;  but  I 
took  and  tell'd  him,  "Squire  Abel/  says  I,  *  I  M  bet  pretty 
nigh  'most  anything,  if  Deacon  Enos  would  tell  the  matter 
to  me,  that  I  could  find  a  hole  for  him  to  creep  out  at ;  for,' 
says  I,  '  I  've  seen  daylight  through  more  twistical  cases 
than  that  afore  now.'  " 

Still  Deacon  Enos  remained  mute  ;  and  Uncle  Jaw,  after 
waiting  a  while,  recommenced  with,  "  But,  railly,  deacon,  I 
should  like  to  hear  the  particulars." 


LOVE   VERSUS   LAW  41 

"I  have  made  up  my  mind  not  to  say  anything  more 
about  that  business/7  said  Deacon  Enos,  in  a  tone  which, 
though  mild,  was  so  exceedingly  definite  that  Uncle  Jaw 
felt  that  the  case  was  hopeless  in  that  quarter ;  he  therefore 
betook  himself  to  the  statement  of  his  own  grievances. 

"  Why,  you  see,  deacon,"  he  began,  at  the  same  time 
taking  the  tongs,  and  picking  up  all  the  little  brands,  and 
disposing  them  in  the  middle  of  the  fire,  —  "  you  see,  two 
days  arter  the  funeral  (for  I  did  n't  railly  like  to  go  any 
sooner),  I  stepped  up  to  hash  over  the  matter  with  old 
Silence ;  for  as  to  Sukey,  she  ha' n't  no  more  to  do  with 
such  things  than  our  white  kitten.  Now,  you  see,  Squire 
Jones,  just  afore  he  died,  he  took  away  an  old  rail  fence  of 
his'n  that  lay  between  his  land  and  mine,  and  began  to 
build  a  new  stone  wall ;  and  when  I  come  to  measure,  I 
found  he  had  took  and  put  a'most  the  whole  width  of  the 
stone  wall  on  to  my  land,  when  there  ought  not  to  have 
been  more  than  half  of  it  come  there.  Now,  you  see,  I  could 
not  say  a  word  to  Squire  Jones,  because,  jest  before  I  found 
it  out,  he  took  and  died ;  and  so  I  thought  I  'd  speak  to 
old  Silence,  and  see  if  she  meant  to  do  anything  about  it, 
'cause  I  knew  pretty  well  she  would  n't ;  and  I  tell  you,  if 
she  did  n't  put  it  on  to  me  !  We  had  a  regular  pitched 
battle  —  the  old  gal,  I  thought  she  would  'a'  screamed  her 
self  to  death !  I  don't  know  but  she  would,  but  just  then 
poor  Sukey  came  in,  and  looked  so  frightened  and  scarey  — 
Sukey  is  a  pretty  gal,  and  looks  so  trembling  and  delicate, 
that  it 's  kinder  a  shame  to  plague  her,  and  so  I  took  and 
come  away  for  that  time." 

Here  Uncle  Jaw  perceived  a  brightening  in  the  face  of 
the  good  deacon,  and  felt  exceedingly  comforted  that  at  last 
he  was  about  to  interest  him  in  his  story. 

But  all  this  while  the  deacon  had  been  in  a  profound 
meditation  concerning  the  ways  and  means  of  putting  a  stop 
to  a  quarrel  that  had  been  his  torment  from  time  immemo- 


42  LOVE   VERSUS   LAW 

rial,  and  just  at  this  moment  a  plan  had  struck  his  mind 
which  our  story  will  proceed  to  unfold. 

The  mode  of  settling  differences  which  had  occurred  to 
the  good  man  was  one  which  has  been  considered  a  specific 
in  reconciling  contending  sovereigns  and  states  from  early 
antiquity,  and  the  deacon  hoped  it  might  have  a  pacifying 
influence  even  in  so  unpromising  a  case  as  that  of  Miss 
Silence  and  Uncle  Jaw. 

In  former  days,  Deacon  Enos  had  kept  the  district  school 
for  several  successive  winters,  and  among  his  .scholars  was 
the  gentle  Susan  Jones,  then  a  plump,  rosy  little  girl,  with 
blue  eyes,  curly  hair,  and  the  sweetest  disposition  in  the 
world.  There  was  also  little  Joseph  Adams,  the  only  son 
of  Uncle  Jaw,  a  fine,  healthy,  robust  boy,  who  used  to  spell 
the  longest  words,  make  the  best  snowballs  and  poplar 
whistles,  and  read  the  loudest  and  fastest  in  the  "  Colum 
bian  Orator  "  of  any  boy  at  school. 

Little  Joe  inherited  all  his  father's  sharpness,  with  a 
double  share  of  good  humor  ;  so  that,  though  he  was  forever 
effervescing  in  the  way  of  one  funny  trick  or  another,  he 
was  a  universal  favorite,  not  only  with  the  deacon,  but  with 
the  whole  school. 

Master  Joseph  always  took  little  Susan  Jones  under  his 
especial  protection,  drew  her  to  school  on  his  sled,  helped 
her  out  with  all  the  long  sums  in  her  arithmetic,  saw  to  it 
that  nobody  pillaged  her  dinner  basket,  or  knocked  down 
her  bonnet,  and  resolutely  whipped  or  snowballed  any  other 
boy  who  attempted  the  same  gallantries.  Years  passed  on, 
and  Uncle  Jaw  had  sent  his  son  to  college.  He  sent  him 
because,  as  he  said,  he  had  "  a  right  to  send  him ;  just  as 
good  a  right  as  Squire  Abel  or  Deacon  Abrams  to  send 
their  boys,  and  so  he  would  send  him."  It  was  the  remem 
brance  of  his  old  favorite  Joseph,  and  his  little  pet  Susan, 
that  came  across  the  mind  of  Deacon  Enos,  and  which 
seemed  to  open  a  gleam  of  light  in  regard  to  the  future. 


LOVE   VERSUS   LAW  43 

So,  when  Uncle  Jaw  had  finished  his  prelection,  the  deacon, 
after  some  meditation,  came  out  with,  "  Railly,  they  say 
that  your  son  is  going  to  have  the  valedictory  in  college." 

Though  somewhat  startled  at  the  abrupt  transition,  Un 
cle  Jaw  found  the  suggestion  too  nattering  to  his  pride  to 
be  dropped  ;  so,  with  a  countenance  grimly  expressive  of  his 
satisfaction,  he  replied,  "  Why,  yes  —  yes  —  I  don't  see  no 
reason  why  a  poor  man's  son  ha'n't  as  much  right  as  any 
one  to  be  at  the  top,  if  he  can  get  there.'7 

"  Just  so,"  replied  Deacon  Enos. 

"  He  was  always  the  boy  for  laming,  and  for  nothing 
else,"  continued  Uncle  Jaw  ;  "  put  him  to  farming,  could  n't 
make  nothing  of  him.  If  I  set  him  to  hoeing  corn  or  hill 
ing  potatoes,  I  'd  always  find  him  stopping  to  chase  hop 
toads,  or  off  after  chip-squirrels.  But  set  him  down  to  a 
book,  and  there  he  was  !  That  boy  larnt  reading  the  quick 
est  of  any  boy  that  ever  I  saw :  it  was  n't  a  month  after  he 
began  his  a-b  abs,  before  he  could  read  in  the  e  Fox  and  the 
Brambles,'  and  in  a  month  more  he  could  clatter  off  his  chap 
ter  in  the  Testament  as  fast  as  any  of  them ;  and  you  see, 
in  college,  it 's  jest  so  —  he  has  ris  right  up  to  be  first." 

"  And  he  is  coming  home  week  after  next/'  said  the  dea 
con  meditatively. 

The  next  morning,  as  Deacon  Enos  was  eating  his  break 
fast,  he  quietly  remarked  to  his  wife,  "  Sally,  I  believe  it  was 
week  after  next  you  were  meaning  to  have  your  quilting  ?  " 

"  Why,  I  never  told  you  so  :  what  alive  makes  you  think 
that,  Deacon  Dudley  ?  " 

"  I  thought  that  was  your  calculation,"  said  the  good 
man  quietly. 

"  Why,  no  ;  to  be  sure,  I  can  have  it,  and  maybe  it 's 
the  best  of  any  time,  if  we  can  get  Black  Dinah  to  come  and 
help  about  the  cakes  and  pies.  I  guess  we  will,  finally." 

"  I  think  it 's  likely  you  had  better,"  replied  the  deacon, 
"  and  we  will  have  all  the  young  folks  here." 


44  LOVE   VERSUS   LAW 

And  now  let  us  pass  over  all  the  intermediate  pound 
ing,  and  grinding,  and  chopping,  which  for  the  next  week 
foretold  approaching  festivity  in  the  kitchen  of  the  deacon. 
Let  us  forbear  to  provoke  the  appetite  of  a  hungry  reader 
by  setting  in  order  before  him  the  mince  pies,  the  cranberry 
tarts,  the  pumpkin  pies,  the  doughnuts,  the  cookies,  and 
other  sweet  cakes  of  every  description,  that  sprang  into  be 
ing  at  the  magic  touch  of  Black  Dinah,  the  village  priestess 
on  all  these  solemnities.  Suffice  it  to  say  that  the  day  had 
arrived,  and  the  auspicious  quilt  was  spread. 

The  invitation  had  not  failed  to  include  the  Misses  Si 
lence  and  Susan  Jones  —  nay,  the  good  deacon  had  pressed 
gallantry  into  the  matter  so  far  as  to  be  the  bearer  of  the 
message  himself  ;  for  which  he  was  duly  rewarded  by  a  broad 
side  from  Miss  Silence,  giving  him  what  she  termed  a  piece 
of  her  mind  in  the  matter  of  the  rights  of  widows  and  or 
phans  ;  to  all  which  the  good  old  man  listened  with  great 
benignity  from  the  beginning  to  the  end,  and  replied  with,  — 
"  Well,  well,  Miss  Silence,  I  expect  you  will  think  better 
of  this  before  long  ;  there  had  best  not  be  any  hard  words 
about  it."  So  saying,  he  took  up  his  hat  and  walked  off, 
while  Miss  Silence,  who  felt  extremely  relieved  by  having 
blown  off  steam,  declared  that  "  it  was  of  no  more  use  to 
hector  old  Deacon  Enos  than  to  fire  a  gun  at  a  bag  of  cot 
ton  wool.  For  all  that,  though,  she  should  n't  go  to  the 
quilting;  nor  more  should  Susan." 

"  But,  sister,  why  not?"  said  the  little  maiden;  "I 
think  I  shall  go."  And  Susan  said  this  in  a  tone  so  mildly 
positive  that  Silence  was  amazed. 

"  What  upon  'arth  ails  you,  Susan  ?  "  said  she,  opening 
her  eyes  with  astonishment ;  "  have  n't  you  any  more  spirit 
than  to  go  to  Deacon  Enos's  when  he  is  doing  all  he  can  to 
ruin  us  ?  " 

"  I  like  Deacon  Enos,"  replied  Susan  ;  "  he  was  always 
kind  to  me  when  I  was  a  little  girl,  and  I  am  not  going  to 
believe  that  he  is  a  bad  man  now." 


LOVE   VERSUS  LAW  45 

When  a  young  lady  states  that  she  is  not  going  to  be 
lieve  a  thing,  good  judges  of  human  nature  generally  give 
up  the  case ;  but  Miss  Silence,  to  whom  the  language  of 
opposition  and  argument  was  entirely  new,  could  scarcely 
give  her  ears  credit  for  veracity  in  the  case ;  she  therefore 
repeated  over  exactly  what  she  said  before,  only  in  a  much 
louder  tone  of  voice,  and  with  much  more  vehement  forms 
of  asseveration  —  a  mode  of  reasoning  which,  if  not  strictly 
logical,  has  at  least  the  sanction  of  very  respectable  authori 
ties  among  the  enlightened  and  learned. 

"  Silence,"  replied  Susan,  when  the  storm  had  spent 
itself,  "if  it  did  not  look  like  being  angry  with  Deacon 
Enos,  I  would  stay  away  to  oblige  you ;  but  it  would 
seem  to  every  one  to  be  taking  sides  in  a  quarrel,  and  I 
never  did,  and  never  will,  have  any  part  or  lot  in  such 
things." 

"  Then  you  '11  just  be  trod  and  trampled  on  all  your  days, 
Susan,"  replied  Silence  ;  "  but,  however,  if  you  choose  to 
make  a  fool  of  yourself,  I  don't ; "  and  so  saying,  she  flounced 
out  of  the  room  in  great  wrath.  It  so  happened,  however, 
that  Miss  Silence  was  one  of  those  who  have  so  little  econ 
omy  in  disposing  of  a  fit  of  anger,  that  it  was  all  used  up 
before  the  time  of  execution  arrived.  It  followed  of  conse 
quence  that,  having  unburdened  her  mind  freely  both  to 
Deacon  Enos  and  to  Susan,  she  began  to  feel  very  much 
more  comfortable  and  good-natured ;  and  consequent  upon 
that  came  divers  reflections  upon  the  many  gossiping  oppor 
tunities  and  comforts  of  a  quilting ;  and  then  the  intrusive 
little  reflection,  "  What  if  she  should  go,  after  all ;  what 
harm  would  be  done  ?  "  and  then  the  inquiry,  "  Whether 
it  was  not  her  duty  to  go  and  look  after  Susan,  poor  child, 
who  had  no  mother  to  watch  over  her  ?  "  In  short,  before 
the  time  of  preparation  arrived,  Miss  Silence  had  fully 
worked  herself  up  to  the  magnanimous  determination  of 
going  to  the  quilting.  Accordingly,  the  next  day,  while 


46  LOVE  VERSUS  LAW 

Susan  was  standing  before  her  mirror,  braiding  up  her  pretty 
hair,  she  was  startled  by  the  apparition  of  Miss  Silence 
coming  into  the  room  as  stiff  as  a  changeable  silk  and  a 
high  horn  comb  could  make  her  ;  and  "  grimly  determined 
was  her  look." 

"  Well,  Susan/'  said  she,  "  if  you  will  go  to  the  quilt 
ing  this  afternoon,  I  think  it  is  my  duty  to  go  and  see  to 
you." 

What  would  people  do  if  this  convenient  shelter  of  duty 
did  not  afford  them  a  retreat  in  cases  when  they  are  dis 
posed  to  change  their  minds  ?  Susan  suppressed  the  arch 
smile  that,  in  spite  of  herself,  laughed  out  at  the  corners  of 
her  eyes,  and  told  her  sister  that  she  was  much  obliged  to 
her  for  her  care.  So  off  they  went  together.  Silence  in 
the  mean  time  held  forth  largely  on  the  importance  of 
standing  up  for  one's  rights,  and  not  letting  one's  self  be 
trampled  on.  The  afternoon  passed  on,  the  elderly  ladies 
quilted  and  talked  scandal,  and  the  younger  ones  discussed 
the  merits  of  the  various  beaux  who  were  expected  to  give 
vivacity  to  the  evening  entertainment.  Among  these  the 
newly  arrived  Joseph  Adams,  just  from  college,  with  all 
his  literary  honors  thick  about  him,  became  a  prominent 
subject  of  conversation.  It  was  duly  canvassed  whether 
the  young  gentleman  might  be  called  handsome,  and  the 
affirmative  was  carried  by  a  large  majority,  although  there 
were  some  variations  and  exceptions ;  one  of  the  party  de 
claring  his  whiskers  to  be  in  too  high  a  state  of  cultivation, 
another  maintaining  that  they  were  in  the  exact  line  of 
beauty,  while  a  third  vigorously  disputed  the  point  whether 
he  wore  whiskers  at  all.  It  was  allowed  by  all,  however, 
that  he  had  been  a  great  beau  in  the  town  where  he  had 
passed  his  college  days.  It  was  also  inquired  into  whether 
he  were  matrimonially  engaged  ;  and  the  negative  being 
understood,  they  diverted  themselves  with  predicting  to  one 
another  the  capture  of  such  a  prize ;  each  prophecy  being 


LOVE   VERSUS  LAW  47 

received  with  such  disclaimers  as  "  Come  now  !  "  "  Do  be 
still !  "  "  Hush  your  nonsense  !  "  and  the  like. 

At  length  the  long-wished-for  hour  arrived,  and  one  by 
one  the  lords  of  creation  began  to  make  their  appearance; 
and  one  of  the  last  was  this  much  admired  youth. 

"  That  is  Joe  Adams."  "  That  is  he  !  "  was  the  busy 
whisper,  as  a  tall,  well-looking  young  man  came  into  the 
room  with  the  easy  air  of  one  who  had  seen  several  things 
before,  and  was  not  to  be  abashed  by  the  combined  blaze  of 
all  the  village  beauties. 

In  truth,  our  friend  Joseph  had  made  the  most  of  his  resi 
dence  in  N".,  paying  his  court  no  less  to  the  Graces  than  the 
Muses.  His  fine  person,  his  frank,  manly  air,  his  ready  con 
versation,  and  his  faculty  of  universal  adaptation  had  made 
his  society  much  coveted  among  the  beau  monde  of  N.  ; 
and  though  the  place  was  small,  he  had  become  familiar  with 
much  good  society. 

We  hardly  know  whether  we  may  venture  to  tell  our  fair 
readers  the  whole  truth  in  regard  to  our  hero.  We  will  merely 
hint,  in  the  gentlest  manner  in  the  world,  that  Mr.  Joseph 
Adams,  being  undeniably  first  in  the  classics  and  first  in  the 
drawing-room,  having  been  gravely  commended  in  his  class  by 
his  venerable  president,  and  gayly  nattered  in  the  drawing- 
room  by  the  elegant  Miss  This  and  Miss  That,  was  rather 
inclining  to  the  opinion  that  he  was  an  uncommonly  fine  fel 
low,  and  even  had  the  assurance  to  think  that,  under  present 
circumstances,  he  could  please  without  making  any  great 
effort  —  a  thing  which,  however  true  it  were  in  point  of  fact, 
is  obviously  improper  to  be  thought  of  by  a  young  man. 
Be  that  as  it  may,  he  moved  about  from  one  to  another, 
shaking  hands  with  all  the  old  ladies,  and  listening  with  the 
greatest  affability  to  the  various  comments  on  his  growth 
and  personal  appearance,  his  points  of  resemblance  to  his 
father,  mother,  grandfather,  and  grandmother,  which  are 
always  detected  by  the  superior  acumen  of  elderly  females. 


48  LOVE   VERSUS  LAW 

Among  the  younger  ones  he  at  once,  and  with  full  frank 
ness,  recognized  old  schoolmates,  and  partners  in  various 
whortleberry,  chestnut,  and  strawberry  excursions,  and  thus 
called  out  an  abundant  flow  of  conversation.  Nevertheless, 
his  eye  wandered  occasionally  around  the  room,  as  if  in  search 
of  something  not  there.  What  could  it  be  ?  It  kindled, 
however,  with  an  expression  of  sudden  brightness  as  he  per 
ceived  the  tall  and  spare  figure  of  Miss  Silence  ;  whether 
owing  to  the  personal  fascinations  of  that  lady,  or  to  other 
causes,  we  leave  the  reader  to  determine. 

Miss  Silence  had  predetermined  never  to  speak  a  word 
again  to  Uncle  Jaw  or  any  of  his  race  ;  but  she  was  taken 
by  surprise  at  the  frank,  extended  hand  and  friendly  "  How 
do  ye  do  ?  "  It  was  not  in  woman  to  resist  so  cordial  an  ad 
dress  from  a  handsome  young  man,  and  Miss  Silence  gave 
her  hand,  and  replied  with  a  graciousness  that  amazed  her 
self.  At  this  moment,  also,  certain  soft  blue  eyes  peeped 
forth  from  a  corner,  just  "  to  see  if  he  looked  as  he  used  to." 
Yes,  there  he  was !  the  same  dark,  mirthful  eyes  that  used 
to  peer  on  her  from  behind  the  corners  of  the  spelling-book 
at  the  district  school ;  and  Susan  Jones  gave  a  deep  sigh  to 
those  times,  and  then  wondered  why  she  happened  to  think 
of  such  nonsense. 

"  How  is  your  sister,  little  Miss  Susan  ?  "  said  Joseph. 

"  Why,  she  is  here  —  have  you  not  seen  her  ? "  said 
Silence  ;  "  there  she  is,  in  that  corner." 

Joseph  looked,  but  could  scarcely  recognize  her.  There 
stood  a  tall,  slender  blooming  girl,  that  might  have  been 
selected  as  a  specimen  of  that  union  of  perfect  health  with 
delicate  fairness  so  characteristic  of  the  young  New  Eng 
land  beauty. 

She  was  engaged  in  telling  some  merry  story  to  a  knot  of 
young  girls,  and  the  rich  color  that,  like  a  bright  spirit, 
constantly  went  and  came  in  her  cheeks ;  the  dimples, 
quick  and  varying  as  those  of  a  little  brook  ;  the  clear, 


LOVE   VERSUS   LAW  49 

mild  eye  ;  the  clustering  curls,  and,  above  all,  the  happy, 
rejoicing  smile,  and  the  transparent  frankness  and  sim 
plicity  of  expression  which  beamed  like  sunshine  about 
her,  all  formed  a  combination  of  charms  that  took  our  hero 
quite  by  surprise  ;  and  when  Silence,  who  had  a  remarkable 
degree  of  directness  in  all  her  dealings,  called  out,  "  Here, 
Susan,  is  Joe  Adams,  inquiring  after  you !  "  our  practiced 
young  gentleman  felt  himself  color  to  the  roots  of  his  hair, 
and  for  a  moment  he  could  scarce  recollect  that  first  rudiment 
of  manners,  "  to  make  his  bow  like  a  good  boy.7'  Susan 
colored  also ;  but,  perceiving  the  confusion  of  our  hero,  her 
countenance  assumed  an  expression  of  mischievous  drollery, 
which,  helped  on  by  the  titter  of  her  companions,  added 
not  a  little  to  his  confusion. 

" Deuce  take  it !  "  thought  he,  "  what's  the  matter  with 
me  ?  "  and,  calling  up  his  courage,  he  dashed  into  the  for 
midable  circle  of  fair  ones,  and  began  chattering  with  one 
and  another,  calling  by  name  with  or  without  introduction, 
remembering  things  that  never  happened,  with  a  freedom 
that  was  perfectly  fascinating. 

"  Really,  how  handsome  he  has  grown !  "  thought  Susan ; 
and  she  colored  deeply  when  once  or  twice  the  dark  eyes 
of  our  hero  made  the  same  observation  with  regard  to  her 
self,  in  that  quick,  intelligible  dialect  which  eyes  alone  can 
speak.  And  when  the  little  party  dispersed,  as  they  did 
very  punctually  at  nine  o'clock,  our  hero  requested  of  Miss 
Silence  the  honor  of  attending  her  home  —  an  evidence  of 
discriminating  taste  which  materially  raised  him  in  the  es 
timation  of  that  lady.  It  was  true,  to  be  sure,  that  Susan 
walked  on  the  other  side  of  him,  her  little  white  hand  just 
within  his  arm  ;  and  there  was  something  in  that  light 
touch  that  puzzled  him  unaccountably,  as  might  be  inferred 
from  the  frequency  with  which  Miss  Silence  was  obliged  to 
bring  up  the  ends  of  conversation  with,  "  What  did  you 
say  ?  "  "  What  were  you  going  to  say  ?  "  and  other  perse- 


50  LOVE   VERSUS   LAW 

vering  forms  of  inquiry,  with  which  a  regular-trained  mat 
ter-of-fact  talker  will  hunt  down  a  poor  fellow  mortal  who 
is  in  danger  of  sinking  into  a  comfortable  reverie. 

When  they  parted  at  the  gate,  however,  Silence  gave  our 
hero  a  hearty  invitation  to  "come  and  see  them  any  time/' 
which  he  mentally  regarded  as  more  to  the  point  than  any 
thing  else  that  had  been  said.  As  Joseph  soberly  retraced 
his  way  homeward,  his  thoughts,  by  some  unaccountable 
association,  began  to  revert  to  such  topics  as  the  loneliness 
of  man  by  himself,  the  need  of  kindred  spirits,  the  solaces 
of  sympathy,  and  other  like  matters. 

That  night  Joseph  dreamed  of  trotting  along  with  his 
dinner  basket  to  the  old  brown  schoolhouse,  and  vainly  en 
deavoring  to  overtake  Susan  Jones,  whom  he  saw  with  her 
little  pasteboard  sunbonnet  a  few  yards  in  front  of  him  ; 
then  he  was  teetering  with  her  on  a  long  board,  her  bright 
little  face  glancing  up  and  down,  while  every  curl  around  it 
seemed  to  be  living  with  delight ;  and  then  he  was  snow 
balling  Tom  Williams  for  knocking  down  Susan's  doll's 
house,  or  he  sat  by  her  on  a  bench,  helping  her  out  with  a 
long  sum  in  arithmetic  ;  but,  with  the  mischievous  fatality 
of  dreams,  the  more  he  ciphered  and  expounded,  the  longer 
and  more  hopeless  grew  the  sum  ;  and  he  awoke  in  the 
morning  pshawing  at  his  ill  luck,  after  having  done  a  sum 
over  half  a  dozen  times,  while  Susan  seemed  to  be  looking 
on  with  the  same  air  of  arch  drollery  that  he  saw  on  her 
face  the  evening  before. 

"  Joseph,"  said  Uncle  Jaw,  the  next  morning  at  break 
fast,  "  I  s'pose  Squire  Jones's  daughters  were  not  at  the 
quilting." 

"  Yes,  sir,  they  were,"  said  our  hero ;  "  they  were  both 
there." 

"  Why,  you  don't  say  so !  " 

"  They  certainly  were,"  persisted  the  son. 

"  Well,  I  thought  the  old  gal  had  too  much  spunk  for 


LOVE   VERSUS   LAW  51 

that ;  you  see  there  is  a  quarrel  between  the  deacon  and  them 


" Indeed!"  said  Joseph.  "I  thought  the  deacon  never 
quarreled  with  anybody." 

"  But,  you  see,  old  Silence  there,  she  will  quarrel  with 
him  ;  railly,  that  cretur  is  a  tough  one  ; "  and  Uncle  Jaw 
leaned  back  in  his  chair,  and  contemplated  the  quarrelsome 
propensities  of  Miss  Silence  with  the  satisfaction  of  a  kin 
dred  spirit.  "  But  I  '11  fix  her  yet,"  he  continued  ;  "  I  see 
how  to  work  it." 

"  Indeed,  father,  I  did  not  know  that  you  had  anything 
to  do  with  their  affairs." 

"  Hain't  I  ?  I  should  like  to  know  if  I  hain't !  " 
replied  Uncle  Jaw  triumphantly.  "  Now,  see  here,  Joseph  : 
you  see,  I  mean  you  shall  be  a  lawyer  :  I  'm  pretty  consid 
erable  of  a  lawyer  myself  —  that  is,  for  one  not  college 
larnt ;  and  I  '11  tell  you  how  it  is  ;  "  and  thereupon  Uncle 
Jaw  launched  forth  into  the  case  of  the  medder  land  and 
the  mill,  and  concluded  with,  "  Now,  Joseph,  this  'ere  is  a 
kinder  whetstone  for  you  to  hone  up  your  wits  on." 

In  pursuance,  therefore,  of  this  plan  of  sharpening  his 
wits  in  the  manner  aforesaid,  our  hero,  after  breakfast,  went, 
like  a  dutiful  son,  directly  towards  Squire  Jones's,  doubt 
less  for  the  purpose  of  taking  ocular  survey  of  the  meadow 
land,  mill,  and  stone  wall;  but,  by  some  unaccountable 
mistake  lost  his  way,  and  found  himself  standing  before  the 
door  of  Squire  Jones's  house. 

The  old  squire  had  been  among  the  aristocracy  of  the 
village,  and  his  house  had  been  the  ultimate  standard  of 
comparison  in  all  matters  of  style  and  garniture.  Their  big 
front  room,  instead  of  being  strewn  with  lumps  of  sand, 
duly  streaked  over  twice  a  week,  was  resplendent  with  a 
carpet  of  red,  yellow,  and  black  stripes,  while  a  towering 
pair  of  long-legged  brass  andirons,  scoured  to  a  silvery 
white,  gave  an  air  of  magnificence  to  the  chimney,  which 


52  LOVE   VERSUS  LAW 

was  materially  increased  by  the  tall  brass-headed  shovel  and 
tongs,  which,  like  a  decorous,  starched  married  couple, 
stood  bolt  upright  in  their  places  on  either  side.  The 
sanctity  of  the  place  was  still  further  maintained  by  keeping 
the  window  shutters  always  closed,  admitting  only  so  much 
light  as  could  come  in  by  a  round  hole  at  the  top  of  the 
shutter  ;  and  it  was  only  on  occasions  of  extraordinary  mag 
nificence  that  the  room  was  thrown  open  to  profane  eyes. 

Our  hero  was  surprised,  therefore,  to  find  both  the  doors 
and  windows  of  this  apartment  open,  and  symptoms  evident 
of  its  being  in  daily  occupation.  The  furniture  still  retained 
its  massive,  clumsy  stiffness,  but  there  were  various  tokens 
that  lighter  fingers  had  been  at  work  there  since  the  notable 
days  of  good  Dame  Jones.  There  was  a  vase  of  flowers  on 
the  table,  two  or  three  books  of  poetry,  and  a  little  fairy 
work-basket,  from  which  peeped  forth  the  edges  of  some 
worked  ruffling  ;  there  was  a  small  writing-desk,  and  last, 
not  least,  in  a  lady's  collection,  an  album,  with  leaves  of 
every  color  of  the  rainbow,  containing  inscriptions,  in  sun 
dry  strong  masculine  hands,  "To  Susan,"  indicating  that 
other  people  had  had  their  eyes  open  as  well  as  Mr.  Joseph 
Adams.  "  So,"  said  he  to  himself,  "  this  quiet  little 
beauty  has  had  admirers,  after  all ;  "  and  consequent  upon 
this  came  another  question  (which  was  none  of  his  concern, 
to  be  sure),  whether  the  little  lady  were  or  were  not  en 
gaged  ;  and  from  these  speculations  he  was  aroused  by  a 
light  footstep,  and  anon  the  neat  form  of  Susan  made  its 
appearance. 

"  Good-morning,  Miss  Jones,"  said  he,  bowing. 

Now,  there  is  something  very  comical  in  the  feeling,  when 
little  boys  and  girls,  who  have  always  known  each  other  as 
plain  Susan  or  Joseph,  first  meet  as  "  Mr."  or  "  Miss  "  So- 
and-so.  Each  one  feels  half  disposed,  half  afraid,  to  return 
to  the  old  familiar  form,  and  awkwardly  fettered  by  the 
recollection  that  they  are  no  longer  children.  Both  parties 


LOVE   VEKSUS   LAW  53 

had  felt  this  the  evening  before,  when  they  met  in  company  ; 
but  now  that  they  were  alone  together,  the  feeling  became 
still  stronger ;  and  when  Susan  had  requested  Mr.  Adams 
to  take  a  chair,  and  Mr.  Adams  had  inquired  after  Miss 
Susan's  health,  there  ensued  a  pause,  which,  the  longer  it 
continued,  seemed  the  more  difficult  to  break,  and  during 
which  Susan's  pretty  face  slowly  assumed  an  expression  of 
the  ludicrous,  till  she  was  as  near  laughing  as  propriety 
would  admit ;  and  Mr.  Adams,  having  looked  out  at  the 
window,  and  up  at  the  mantelpiece,  and  down  at  the  carpet, 
at  last  looked  at  Susan  ;  their  eyes  met ;  the  effect  was  elec 
trical;  they  both  smiled,  and  then  laughed  outright,  after 
which  the  whole  difficulty  of  conversation  vanished. 

"  Susan,"  said  Joseph,  "  do  you  remember  the  old  school- 
house  ?  " 

"  I  thought  that  was  what  you  were  thinking  of,"  said 
Susan ;  "  but,  really,  you  have  grown  and  altered  so  that 
I  could  hardly  believe  my  eyes  last  night." 

"  Nor  I  mine/7  said  Joseph,  with  a  glance  that  gave  a 
very  complimentary  turn  to  the  expression. 

Our  readers  may  imagine  that  after  this  the  conversation 
proceeded  to  grow  increasingly  confidential  and  interesting ; 
that  from  the  account  of  early  life,  each  proceeded  to  let  the 
other  know  something  of  intervening  history,  in  the  course 
of  which  each  discovered  a  number  of  new  and  admirable 
traits  in  the  other,  such  things  being  matters  of  very  com 
mon  occurrence.  In  the  course  of  the  conversation  Joseph 
discovered  that  it  was  necessary  that  Susan  should  have  two 
or  three  books  then  in  his  possession  ;  and  as  promptitude  is 
a  great  matter  in  such  cases,  he  promised  to  bring  them  "  to 
morrow." 

For  some  time  our  young  friends  pursued  their  acquain 
tance  without  a  distinct  consciousness  of  anything  except  that 
it  was  a  very  pleasant  thing  to  be  together.  During  the  long, 
still  afternoons,  they  rambled  among  the  fading  woods,  now 


54  LOVE  VERSUS  LAW 

illuminated  with  the  radiance  of  the  dying  year,  and  senti 
mentalized  and  quoted  poetry  ;  and  almost  every  evening 
Joseph  found  some  errand  to  bring  him  to  the  house ;  a 
book  for  Miss  Susan,  or  a  bundle  of  roots  and  herbs  for  Miss 
Silence,  or  some  remarkably  fine  yarn  for  her  to  knit  —  at 
tentions  which  retained  our  hero  in  the  good  graces  of  the 
latter  lady,  and  gained  him  the  credit  of  being  "  a  young 
man  that  knew  how  to  behave  himself."  As  Susan  was  a 
leading  member  in  the  village  choir,  our  hero  was  directly 
attacked  with  a  violent  passion  for  sacred  music,  which 
brought  him  punctually  to  the  singing-school,  where  the 
young  people  came  together  to  sing  anthems  and  fuguing 
tunes,  and  to  eat  apples  and  chestnuts. 

It  cannot  be  supposed  that  all  these  things  passed  unno 
ticed  by  those  wakeful  eyes  that  are  ever  upon  the  motions 
of  such  "  bright,  particular  stars  ;  "  and  as  is  usual  in  such 
cases,  many  things  were  known  to  a  certainty  which  were 
not  yet  known  to  the  parties  themselves.  The  young  belles 
and  beaux  whispered  and  tittered,  and  passed  the  original 
jokes  and  witticisms  common  in  such  cases,  while  the  old 
ladies  soberly  took  the  matter  in  hand  when  they  went  out 
with  their  knitting  to  make  afternoon  visits,  considering  how 
much  money  Uncle  Jaw  had,  how  much  his  son  would  have, 
and  what  all  together  would  come  to,  and  whether  Joseph 
would  be  a  "  smart  man,"  and  Susan  a  good  housekeeper, 
with  all  the  "  ifs,  ands,  and  buts  "  of  married  life. 

But  the  most  fearful  wonders  and  prognostics  crowded 
around  the  point  "  what  Uncle  Jaw  would  have  to  say  to 
the  matter."  His  lawsuit  with  the  sisters  being  well  un 
derstood,  as  there  was  every  reason  it  should  be,  it  was  sur 
mised  what  two  such  vigorous  belligerents  as  himself  and 
Miss  Silence  would  say  to  the  prospect  of  a  matrimonial 
conjunction.  It  was  also  reported  that  Deacon  Enos  Dud 
ley  had  a  claim  to  the  land  which  constituted  the  finest  part 
of  Susan's  portion,  the  loss  of  which  would  render  the  con- 


LOVE   VERSUS   LAW  55 

sent  of  Uncle  Jaw  still  more  doubtful.  But  all  this  while 
Miss  Silence  knew  nothing  of  the  matter,  for  her  habit  of 
considering  and  treating  Susan  as  a  child  seemed  to  gain 
strength  with  time.  Susan  was  always  to  be  seen  to,  and 
watched,  and  instructed,  and  taught ;  and  Miss  Silence  could 
not  conceive  that  one  who  could  not  even  make  pickles, 
without  her  to  oversee,  could  think  of  such  a  matter  as  set 
ting  up  housekeeping  on  her  own  account.  To  be  sure,  she 
began  to  observe  an  extraordinary  change  in  her  sister ;  re 
marked  that  "  lately  Susan  seemed  to  be  getting  sort  o' 
crazy-headed ;  "  that  she  seemed  not  to  have  any  "  faculty  " 
for  anything  ;  that  she  had  made  gingerbread  twice,  and 
forgot  the  ginger  one  time,  and  put  in  mustard  the  other ; 
that  she  shook  the  salt-cellar  out  in  the  tablecloth,  and  let 
the  cat  into  the  pantry  half  a  dozen  times ;  and  that  when 
scolded  for  these  sins  of  omission  or, commission,  she  had  a 
fit  of  crying,  and  did  a  little  worse  than  before.  Silence 
was  of  opinion  that  Susan  was  getting  to  be  "  weakly  and 
naarvy,"  and  actually  concocted  an  unmerciful  pitcher  of 
wormwood  and  boneset,  which  she  said  was  to  keep  off  the 
"  shaking  weakness  "  that  was  coming  over  her.  In  vain 
poor  Susan  protested  that  she  was  well  enough  ;  Miss  Silence 
knew  better ;  and  one  evening  she  entertained  Mr.  Joseph 
Adams  with  a  long  statement  of  the  case  in  all  its  bearings, 
and  ended  with  demanding  his  opinion,  as  a  candid  listener, 
whether  the  wormwood  and  boneset  sentence  should  not  be 
executed. 

Poor  Susan  had  that  very  afternoon  parted  from  a  knot 
of  young  friends  who  had  teased  her  most  unmercifully  on 
the  score  of  attentions  received,  till  she  began  to  think  the 
very  leaves  and  stones  were  so  many  eyes  to  pry  into  her 
secret  feelings  ;  and  then  to  have  the  whole  case  set  in  or 
der  before  the  very  person,  too,  whom  she  most  dreaded. 
"  Certainly  he  would  think  she  was  acting  like  a  fool ;  per 
haps  he  did  not  mean  anything  more  than  friendship,  after 


56  LOVE   VERSUS   LAW 

all ;  and  she  would  not  for  the  world  have  him  suppose 
that  she  cared  a  copper  more  for  him  than  for  any  other 
friend,  or  that  she  was  in  love,  of  all  things."  So  she  sat 
very  busy  with  her  knitting-work,  scarcely  knowing  what 
she  was  about,  till  Silence  called  out,  — 

"  Why,  Susan,  what  a  piece  of  work  you  are  making  of 
that  stocking  heel  !  What  in  the  world  are  you  doing  to 
it?" 

Susan  dropped  her  knitting,  and  making  some  pettish  an 
swer,  escaped  out  of  the  room. 

"  Now,  did  you  ever  ?  "  said  Silence,  laying  down  the 
seam  she  had  been  cross-stitching ;  "  what  is  the  matter 
with  her,  Mr.  Adams  ?  " 

u  Miss  Susan  is  certainly  indisposed,"  replied  our  hero 
gravely.  "  I  must  get  her  to  take  your  advice,  Miss 
Silence." 

Our  hero  followed  Susan  to  the  front  door,  where  she 
stood  looking  out  at  the  moon,  and  begged  to  know  what 
distressed  her. 

Of  course  it  was  "  nothing,"  the  young  lady's  usual  com 
plaint  when  in  low  spirits ;  and  to  show  that  she  was  per 
fectly  easy,  she  began  an  unsparing  attack  on  a  white  rose 
bush  near  by. 

"  Susan !  "  said  Joseph,  laying  his  hand  on  hers,  and  in 
a  tone  that  made  her  start.  She  shook  back  her  curls,  and 
looked  up  to  him  with  such  an  innocent,  confiding  face  ! 

Ah,  my  good  reader,  you  may  go  on  with  this  part  of  the 
story  for  yourself.  We  are  principled  against  unveiling  the 
"  sacred  mysteries,"  the  "  thoughts  that  breathe  and  words 
that  burn,"  in  such  little  moonlight  interviews  as  these. 
You  may  fancy  all  that  followed ;  and  we  can  only  assure 
all  who  are  doubtful  that,  under  judicious  management, 
cases  of  this  kind  may  be  disposed  of  without  wormwood  or 
boneset.  Our  hero  and  heroine  were  called  to  sublunary 
realities  by  the  voice  of  Miss  Silence,  who  came  into  the 


LOVE   VERSUS  LAW  57 

passage  to  see  what  upon  earth  they  were  doing.  That 
lady  was  satisfied  by  the  representations  of  so  friendly  and 
learned  a  young  man  as  Joseph  that  nothing  immediately 
alarming  was  to  be  apprehended  in  the  case  of  Susan  ;  and 
she  retired.  From  that  evening  Susan  stepped  about  with  a 
heart  many  pounds  lighter  than  before. 

"  I  '11  tell  you  what,  Joseph,"  said  Uncle  Jaw,  «  I  '11  tell 
you  what,  now  :  I  hear  'ern  tell  that  you  've  took  and 
courted  that  'ere  Susan  Jones.  Now,  I  jest  want  to  know 
if  it 's  true." 

There  was  an  explicitness  about  this  mode  of  inquiry 
that  took  our  hero  quite  by  surprise,  so  that  he  could  only 

reply,  — 

"  Why,  sir,  supposing  I  had,  would  there  be  any  objec 
tion  to  it  in  your  mind  ?  " 

"  Don't  talk  to  me,"  said  Uncle  Jaw.  "  I  jest  want  to 
know  if  it 's  true." 

Our  hero  put  his  hands  in  his  pockets,  walked  to  the 
window  and  whistled. 

"  'Cause  if  you  have,"  said  Uncle  Jaw,  "  you  may  jest 
uncourt  as  fast  as  you  can ;  for  Squire  Jones's  daughter 
won't  get  a  single  cent  of  my  money,  I  can  tell  you  that." 

"  Why,  father,  Susan  Jones  is  not  to  blame  for  any 
thing  that  her  father  did ;  and  I  'm  sure  she  is  a  pretty 
girl  enough." 

"  I  don't  care  if  she  is  pretty.  What 's  that  to  me  ? 
I've  got  you  through  college,  Joseph;  and  a  hard  time 
I've  had  of  it,  a-delvin'  and  slavin'  ;  and  here  you  come, 
and  the  very  first  thing  you  do  you  must  take  and  court 
that  'ere  Squire  Jones's  daughter,  who  was  always  putting 
himself  up  above  me.  Besides,  I  mean  to  have  the  law 
on  that  estate  yet ;  and  Deacon  Dudley,  he  will  have  the 
law,  too ;  and  it  will  cut  off  the  best  piece  of  land  the  girl 
has ;  and  when  you  get  married,  I  mean  you  shall  have 
something.  It 's  jest  a  trick  of  them  gals  at  me ;  but  I 


58  LOVE   VERSUS   LAW 

guess  I  '11  come  up  with  'em  yet.  I  'm  just  a-goin'  down 
to  have  a  '  regular  hash  '  with  old  Silence,  to  let  her  know 
she  can't  come  round  me  that  way." 

"  Silence,"  said  Susan,  drawing  her  head  into  the  window, 
and  looking  apprehensive,  "  there  is  Mr.  Adams  coming 
here." 

"  What,  Joe  Adams  ?     Well,  and  what  if  he  is  ?  " 

"  No,  no,  sister,  but  it  is  his  father  —  it  is  Uncle  Jaw." 

"  Well,  s'pose  't  is,  child  —  what  scares  you  ?  S'pose 
I  'm  afraid  of  him  ?  If  he  wants  more  than  I  gave  him 
last  time,  I  '11  put  it  on."  So  saying,  Miss  Silence  took 
her  knitting  work  and  marched  down  into  the  sitting-room, 
and  sat  herself  bolt  upright  in  an  attitude  of  defiance,  while 
poor  Susan,  feeling  her  heart  beat  unaccountably  fast,  glided 
out  of  the  room. 

"Well,  good-morning,  Miss  Silence,"  said  Uncle  Jaw. 
after  having  scraped  his  feet  on  the  scraper,  and  scrubbed 
them  on  the  mat  nearly  ten  minutes,  in  silent  deliberation. 

"  Morning,  sir,"  said  Silence,  abbreviating  the  "  good." 

Uncle  Jaw  helped  himself  to  a  chair  directly  in  front  of 
the  enemy,  dropped  his  hat  on  the  floor,  and  surveyed  Miss 
Silence  with  a  dogged  air  of  satisfaction,  like  one  who  is 
sitting  down  to  a  regular,  comfortable  quarrel,  and  means 
to  make  the  most  of  it. 

Miss  Silence  tossed  her  head  disdainfully,  but  scorned  to 
commence  hostilities. 

"  So,  Miss  Silence,"  said  Uncle  Jaw  deliberately,  "  you 
don't  think  you  '11  do  anything  about  that  'ere  matter." 

"  What  matter  ?  "  said  Silence,  with  an  intonation  resem 
bling  that  of  a  roasted  chestnut  when  it  bursts  from  the 
fire. 

"  I  really  thought,  Miss  Silence,  in  that  'ere  talk  I  had 
with  you  about  Squire  Jones's  cheatin'  about  that  'ere  "  — 

"  Mr.  Adams,"  said  Silence,  "  I  tell  you,  to  begin  with, 
I  'm  not  a-going  to  be  sauced  in  this  'ere  way  by  you.  You 


LOVE   VERSUS   LAW  59 

hain't  got  common  decency,  nor  common  sense,  nor  common 
anything  else,  to  talk  so  to  me  about  my  father ;  I  won't 
bear  it,  I  tell  you." 

"  Why,  Miss  Jones,"  said  Uncle  Jaw,  "  how  you  talk. 
Well,  to  be  sure,  Squire  Jones  is  dead  and  gone,  and  it  is 
as  well  not  to  call  it  cheatin',  as  I  was  tellin'  Deacon  Enos 
when  he  was  talking  about  that  'ere  lot  —  that  'ere  lot,  you 
know,  that  he  sold  the  deacon,  and  never  let  him  have  the 
deed  on't." 

"  That 's  a  lie,"  said  Silence,  starting  on  her  feet ;  "  that's 
an  up  and  down  black  lie !  I  tell  you  that,  now,  before  you 
say  another  word." 

"  Miss  Silence,  railly,  you  seem  to  be  getting  touchy," 
said  Uncle  Jaw ;  "  well,  to  be  sure,  if  the  deacon  can  let  that 
pass,  other  folks  can ;  and  maybe  the  deacon  will,  because 
Squire  Jones  was  a  church  member,  and  the  deacon  is 
'mazin'  tender  about  bringin'  out  anything  against  professors ; 
but  railly,  now,  Miss  Silence,  I  did  n't  think  you  and  Susan 
were  going  to  work  it  so  cunning  in  this  here  way." 

"  I  don't  know  what  you  mean,  and  what 's  more,  I  don't 
care,"  said  Silence,  resuming  her  work,  and  calling  back  the 
bolt-upright  dignity  with  which  she  began. 

There  was  a  pause  of  some  moments,  during  which  the 
features  of  Silence  worked  with  suppressed  rage,  which  was 
contemplated  by  Uncle  Jaw  with  undisguised  satisfaction. 

"  You  see,  I  s'pose,  I  should  n't  'a'  minded  your  Susan's 
setting  out  to  court  my  Joe,  if  it  had  n't  'a'  been  for  them 
things." 

"  Courting  your  son  !  Mr.  Adams,  I  should  like  to  know 
what  you  mean  by  that.  I  'm  sure  nobody  wants  your  son, 
though  he 's  a  civil,  likely  fellow  enough  ;  yet  with  such  an 
old  dragon  for  a  father,  I  '11  warrant  he  won't  get  anybody 
to  court  him,  nor  be  courted  by  him  neither." 

"  Railly,  Miss  Silence,  you  ain't  hardly  civil,  now." 

"  Civil !     I  should  like  to  know  who  could  be  civil.     You 


60  LOVE   VERSUS   LAW 

know,  now,  as  well  as  I  do,  that  you  are  saying  all  this  out  of 
clear,  sheer  ugliness  ;  and  that  's  what  you  keep  a-doing  all 
round  the  neighborhood." 

"  Miss  Silence,"  said  Uncle  Jaw,  "  I  don't  want  no  hard 
words  with  you.  It  's  pretty  much  known  round  the  neigh 
borhood  that  your  Susan  thinks  she  '11  get  my  Joe,  and  I 
s'pose  you  was  thinking  that  perhaps  it  would  be  the  best 
way  of  settling  up  matters ;  but  you  see,  now,  I  took  and 
tell'd  my  son  I  railly  did  n't  see  as  I  could  afford  it ;  I  took 
and  tell'd  him  that  young  folks  must  have  something  con 
siderable  to  start  with ;  and  that,  if  Susan  lost  that  'ere  piece 
of  ground,  as  is  likely  she  will,  it  would  be  cutting  off  quite 
too  much  of  a  piece ;  so  you  see,  I  don't  want  you  to  take 
no  encouragement  about  that." 

"  Well,  I  think  this  is  pretty  well !  "  exclaimed  Silence, 
provoked  beyond  measure  or  endurance.  "  You  old  torment ! 
think  I  don't  know  what  you  're  at !  I  and  Susan  courting 
your  son  ?  I  wonder  if  you  ain't  ashamed  of  yourself,  now ! 
I  should  like  to  know  what  I  or  she  have  done,  now,  to  get 
that  notion  into  your  head  ?  " 

"I  didn't  s'pose  you  'spected  to  get  him  yourself,"  said 
Uncle  Jaw,  "  for  I  guess  by  this  time  you  've  pretty  much 
gin  up  trying,  hain't  ye  ?  But  Susan  does,  I  'm  pretty 
sure." 

"  Here,  Susan !  Susan  !  you  —  come  down  !  "  called  Miss 
Silence,  in  great  wrath,  throwing  open  the  chamber  door ; 
"  Mr.  Adams  wants  to  speak  with  you."  Susan,  fluttering 
and  agitated,  slowly  descended  into  the  room,  where  she 
stopped,  and  looked  hesitatingly,  first  at  Uncle  Jaw  and 
then  at  her  sister,  who,  without  ceremony,  proposed  the  sub 
ject  matter  of  the  interview  as  follows :  — 

"  Now,  Susan,  here  's  this  man  pretends  to  say  that  you've 
been  a-courting  and  snaring  to  get  his  son  ;  and  I  just  want 
you  to  tell  him  that  you  hain't  never  had  no  thought  of  him, 
and  that  you  won't  have,  neither." 


LOVE   VERSUS   LAW  61 

This  considerate  way  of  announcing  the  subject  had  the 
effect  of  bringing  the  burning  color  into  Susan's  face,  as  she 
stood  like  a  convicted  culprit,  with  her  eyes  bent  on  the 
floor. 

Uncle  Jaw,  savage  as  he  was,  was  always  moved  by  fe 
male  loveliness,  as  wild  beasts  are  said  to  be  mysteriously 
swayed  by  music,  and  looked  on  the  beautiful,  downcast 
face  with  more  softening  than  Miss  Silence,  who,  provoked 
that  Susan  did  not  immediately  respond  to  the  question, 
seized  her  by  the  arm,  and  eagerly  reiterated,  — 

"  Susan  !  why  don't  you  speak,  child  ?  " 

Gathering  desperate  courage,  Susan  shook  off  the  hand  of 
Silence,  and  straightened  herself  up  with  as  much  dignity 
as  some  little  flower  lifts  up  its  head  when  it  has  been  bent 
down  by  raindrops. 

"  Silence,"  she  said,  "  I  never  would  have  come  down 
if  I  had  thought  it  was  to  hear  such  things  as  this.  Mr. 
Adams,  all  I  have  to  say  to  you  is,  that  your  son  has  sought 
me,  and  not  I  your  son.  If  you  wish  to  know  any  more, 
he  can  tell  you  better  than  I." 

"  Well,  I  vow  !  she  is  a  pretty  gal,"  said  Uncle  Jaw,  as 
Susan  shut  the  door. 

This  exclamation  was  involuntary  ;  then  recollecting 
himself,  he  picked  up  his  hat,  and  saying,  "  Well,  I  guess 
I  may  as  well  get  along  hum,"  he  began  to  depart ;  but 
turning  round  before  he  shut  the  door,  he  said,  "  Miss  Si 
lence,  if  you  should  conclude  to  do  anything  about  that  'ere 
fence,  just  send  word  over  and  let  me  know." 

Silence,  without  deigning  any  reply,  marched  up  into 
Susan's  little  chamber,  where  our  heroine  was  treating  reso 
lution  to  a  good  fit  of  crying. 

"  Susan,  I  did  not  think  you  had  been  such  a  fool,"  said 
the  lady.  "  I  do  want  to  know,  now,  if  you  've  railly  been 
thinking  of  getting  married,  and  to  that  Joe  Adams  of  all 
folks  !  " 


62  LOVE   VERSUS  LAW 

Poor  Susan !  such  an  interlude  in  all  her  pretty,  roman 
tic  little  dreams  about  kindred  feelings  and  a  hundred  other 
delightful  ideas,  that  nutter  like  singing  birds  through  the 
fairy  land  of  first  love.  Such  an  interlude  !  to  be  called 
on  by  gruff  human  voices  to  give  up  all  the  cherished  secrets 
that  she  had  trembled  to  whisper  even  to  herself.  She  felt 
as  if  love  itself  had  been  defiled  by  the  coarse,  rough  hands 
that  had  been  meddling  with  it ;  so  to  her  sister's  soothing 
address  Susan  made  no  answer,  only  to  cry  and  sob  still 
more  bitterly  than  before. 

Miss  Silence,  if  she  had  a  great  stout  heart,  had  no  less 
a  kind  one,  and  seeing  Susan  take  the  matter  so  bitterly  to 
heart,  she  began  gradually  to  subside. 

"  Susan,  you  poor  little  fool,  you,"  said  she,  at  the  same 
time  giving  her  a  hearty  slap,  as  expressive  of  earnest  sym 
pathy,  "  I  really  do  feel  for  you  ;  that  good-for-nothing 
fellow  has  been  a-cheatin'  you,  I  do  believe." 

"  Oh,  don't  talk  any  more  about  it,  for  mercy's  sake," 
said  Susan  ;  "  I  am  sick  of  the  whole  of  it." 

"  That  ?s  you,  Susan  !  Glad  to  hear  you  say  so  !  I  '11 
stand  up  for  you,  Susan  ;  if  I  catch  Joe  Adams  coming  here 
again  with  his  palavering  face,  I  '11  let  him  know  !  " 

"  No,  no !  Don't  for  mercy's  sake,  say  anything  to  Mr. 
Adams  — don't!" 

"  Well,  child,  don't  claw  hold  of  a  body  so  !  Well,  at 
any  rate,  I'll  just  let  Joe  Adams  know  that  we  hain't  no 
thing  more  to  say  to  him." 

"  But  I  don't  wish  to  say  that ;  that  is  —  I  don't  know 
—  indeed,  sister  Silence,  don't  say  anything  about  it." 

"  Why  not  ?  You  ain't  such  a  natural,  now,  as  to  want 
to  marry  him,  after  all,  hey  ?  " 

"I  don't  know  what  I  want,  nor  what  I  don't  want; 
only,  Silence,  do  now,  if  you  love  me,  do  promise  not  to 
say  anything  at  all  to  Mr.  Adams  —  don't." 

"  Well,  then,  I  won't,"  said  Silence ;    "  but,  Susan,  if 


LOVE   VERSUS  LAW  63 

you  railly  was  in  love  all  this  while,  why  hain't  you  been 
and  told  me  ?  Don't  you  know  that  1 'm  as  much  as  a 
mother  to  you,  and  you  ought  to  have  told  me  in  the 
beginning  ?  " 

"  I  don't  know,  Silence  !  I  could  n't  —  I  don't  want  to 
talk  about  it." 

"  Well,  Susan,  you  ain't  a  bit  like  me,"  said  Silence  —  a 
remark  evincing  great  discrimination,  certainly,  and  with 
which  the  conversation  terminated. 

That  very  evening  our  friend  Joseph  walked  down  to 
wards  the  dwelling  of  the  sisters,  not  without  some  anxiety 
for  the  result,  for  he  knew  by  his  father's  satisfied  appear 
ance  that  war  had  been  declared.  He  walked  into  the 
family  room  and  found  nobody  there  but  Miss  Silence,  who 
was  sitting  grim  as  an  Egyptian  sphinx,  stitching  very  vig 
orously  on  a  meal  bag,  in  which  interesting  employment  she 
thought  proper  to  be  so  much  engaged  as  not  to  remark  the 
entrance  of  our  hero.  To  Joseph's  accustomed  "Good-even 
ing,  Miss  Silence,"  she  replied  merely  by  looking  up  with  a 
cold  nod,  and  went  on  with  her  sewing.  It  appeared  that 
she  had  determined  on  a  literal  version  of  her  promise  not 
to  say  anything  to  Mr.  Adams. 

Our  hero,  as  we  have  before  stated,  was  familiar  with  the 
crooks  and  turns  of  the  female  mind,  and  mentally  resolved 
to  put  a  bold  face  on  the  matter,  and  give  Miss  Silence  no 
encouragement  in  her  attempt  to  make  him  feel  himself 
unwelcome.  It  was  rather  a  frosty  autumnal  evening,  and 
the  fire  on  the  hearth  was  decaying.  Mr.  Joseph  bustled 
about  most  energetically,  throwing  down  the  tongs  and 
shovel  and  bellows,  while  he  pulled  the  fire  to  pieces,  raked 
out  ashes  and  brands,  and  then,  in  a  twinkling,  was  at  the 
woodpile,  from  whence  he  selected  a  massive  backlog  and 
forestick,  with  accompaniments,  which  were  soon  roaring 
and  crackling  in  the  chimney. 

"There,  now,  that  does  look  something  like  comfort," 


64  LOVE   VERSUS   LAW 

said  our  hero ;  and  drawing  forward  the  big  rocking-chair, 
he  seated  himself  in  it,  and  rubbed  his  hands  with  an  air 
of  great  complacency.  Miss  Silence  looked  not  up,  but 
stitched  so  much  the  faster,  so  that  one  might  distinctly 
hear  the  crack  of  the  needle  and  the  whistle  of  the  thread 
all  over  the  apartment. 

"  Have  you  a  headache  to-night,  Miss  Silence  ?  " 

"  No  !  "  was  the  gruff  answer. 

"  Are  you  in  a  hurry  about  those  bags  ?  "  said  he,  glancing 
at  a  pile  of  unmade  ones  which  lay  by  her  side. 

No  reply.  "  Hang  it  all ! "  said  our  hero  to  himself, 
"I'll  make  her  speak." 

Miss  Silence's  needlebook  and  brown  thread  lay  on  a 
chair  beside  her.  Our  friend  "helped  himself  to  a  needle 
and  thread,  and  taking  one  of  the  bags,  planted  himself 
bolt  upright  opposite  to  Miss  Silence,  and  pinning  his  work 
to  his  knee,  commenced  stitching  at  a  rate  fully  equal  to 
her  own.  Miss  Silence  looked  up  and  fidgeted,  but  went 
on  with  her  work  faster  than  before ;  but  the  faster  she 
worked,  the  faster  and  steadier  worked  our  hero,  all  in 
"  marvelous  silence."  There  began  to  be  an  odd  twitching 
about  the  muscles  of  Miss  Silence's  face ;  our  hero  took  no 
notice,  having  pursed  his  features  into  an  expression  of 
unexampled  gravity,  which  only  grew  more  intense  as  he 
perceived,  by  certain  uneasy  movements,  that  the  adversary 
was  beginning  to  waver.  As  they  were  sitting,  stitching 
away,  their  needles  whizzing  at  each  other  like  a  couple 
of  locomotives  engaged  in  conversation,  Susan  opened  the 
door. 

The  poor  child  had  been  crying  for  the  greater  part  of 
her  spare  time  during  the  day,  and  was  in  no  very  merry 
humor ;  but  the  moment  that  her  astonished  eyes  compre 
hended  the  scene,  she  burst  into  a  fit  of  almost  inextinguish 
able  merriment,  while  Silence  laid  down  her  needle,  and 
looked  half  amused  and  half  angry.  Our  hero,  however, 


LOVE   VERSUS   LAW  65 

continued  his  business  with  inflexible  perseverance,  unpin 
ning  his  work  and  moving  the  seam  along,  and  going  on  with 
increased  velocity.  Poor  Miss  Silence  was  at  length  van 
quished,  and  joined  in  the  loud  laugh  which  seemed  to  con 
vulse  her  sister.  Whereupon  our  hero  unpinned  his  work, 
and  folding  it  up,  looked  up  at  her  with  all  the  assurance 
of  impudence  triumphant,  and  remarked  to  Susan,  — 

"  Your  sister  had  such  a  pile  of  these  pillowcases  to 
make,  that  she  was  quite  discouraged,  and  engaged  me  to 
do  half  a  dozen  of  them  ;  when  I  first  came  in  she  was  so 
busy  she  could  not  even  speak  to  me." 

"Well,  if  you  ain't  the  beater  for  impudence!"  said 
Miss  Silence. 

"  The  beater  for  industry  —  so  I  thought,"  rejoined  our 
hero. 

Susan,  who  had  been  in  a  highly  tragical  state  of  mind 
all  day,  and  who  was  meditating  on  nothing  less  sublime 
than  an  eternal  separation  from  her  lover,  which  she  had 
imagined,  with  all  the  affecting  attendants  and  consequents, 
was  entirely  revolutionized  by  the  unexpected  turn  thus 
given  to  her  ideas,  while  our  hero  pursued  the  opportunity 
he  had  made  for  himself,  and  exerted  his  powers  of  enter 
tainment  to  the  utmost,  till  Miss  Silence,  declaring  that  if 
she  had  been  washing  all  day  she  should  not  have  been 
more  tired  than  she  was  with  laughing,  took  up  her  candle, 
and  good-naturedly  left  our  young  people  to  settle  matters 
between  themselves.  There  was  a  grave  pause  of  some 
length  when  she  had  departed,  which  was  broken  by  our 
hero,  who,  seating  himself  by  Susan,  inquired  very  seri 
ously  if  his  father  had  made  proposals  of  marriage  to  Miss 
Silence  that  morning. 

"  No,  you  provoking  creature !  "  said  Susan,  at  the  same 
time  laughing  at  the  absurdity  of  the  idea. 

"  Well,  now,  don't  draw  on  your  long  face  again,  Susan," 
said  Joseph ;  "  you  have  been  trying  to  lengthen  it  down 


66  LOVE   VERSUS   LAW 

all  the  evening,  if  I  would  have  let  you.  Seriously,  now, 
I  know  that  something  painful  passed  between  my  father 
and  you  this  morning,  but  I  shall  not  inquire  what  it  was. 
I  only  tell  you,  frankly,  that  he  has  expressed  his  disap 
probation  of  our  engagement,  forbidden  me  to  go  on  with 
it,  and  "  — 

"  And,  consequently,  I  release  you  from  all  engagements 
and  obligations  to  me,  even  before  you  ask  it,"  said  Susan. 

"  You  are  extremely  accommodating,'7  replied  Joseph  ; 
"  but  I  cannot  promise  to  be  as  obliging  in  giving  up  cer 
tain  promises  made  to  me,  unless,  indeed,  the  feelings  that 
dictated  them  should  have  changed." 

"  Oh,  no  —  no,  indeed,"  said  Susan  earnestly  ;  "  you 
know  it  is  not  that ;  but  if  your  father  objects  to  me  " — 

"  If  my  father  objects  to  you,  he  is  welcome  not  to  marry 
you,"  said  Joseph. 

"Now,  Joseph,  do  be  serious,"  said  Susan. 

"  Well,  then,  seriously,  Susan,  I  know  my  obligations  to 
my  father,  and  in  all  that  relates  to  his  comfort  I  will  ever 
be  dutiful  and  submissive,  for  I  have  no  college-boy  pride 
on  the  subject  of  submission  ;  but  in  a  matter  so  individually 
my  own  as  the  choice  of  a  wife,  in  a  matter  that  will  most 
likely  affect  my  happiness  years  and  years  after  he  has  ceased 
to  be,  I  hold  that  I  have  a  right  to  consult  my  own  incli 
nations,  and,  by  your  leave,  my  dear  little  lady,  I  shall  take 
that  liberty." 

"  But,  then,  if  your  father  is  made  angry,  you  know  what 
sort  of  a  man  he  is ;  and  how  could  I  stand  in  the  way  of 
all  your  prospects  ?  " 

"  Why,  my  dear  Susan,  do  you  think  I  count  myself  de 
pendent  upon  my  father,  like  the  heir  of  an  English  estate, 
who  has  nothing  to  do  but  sit  still  and  wait  for  money  to 
come  to  him  ?  No  !  I  have  energy  and  education  to  start 
with,  and  if  I  cannot  take  care  of  myself,  and  you  too,  then 
cast  me  off  and  welcome ; "  and,  as  Joseph  spoke,  his  fine 


LOVE   VERSUS   LAW  67 

face  glowed  with  a  conscious  power,  which  unfettered  youth 
never  feels  so  fully  as  in  America.  He  paused  a  moment, 
and  resumed :  "  Nevertheless,  Susan,  I  respect  my  father ; 
whatever  others  may  say  of  him,  I  shall  never  forget  that  I 
owe  to  his  hard  earnings  the  education  that  enables  me  to 
do  or  be  anything,  and  I  shall  not  wantonly  or  rudely  cross 
him.  I  do  not  despair  of  gaining  his  consent ;  my  father 
has  a  great  partiality  for  pretty  girls,  and  if  his  love  of  con 
tradiction  is  not  kept  awake  by  open  argument,  I  will  trust 
to  time  and  you  to  bring  him  round ;  but,  whatever  comes, 
rest  assured,  my  dearest  one,  I  have  chosen  for  life,  and 
cannot  change." 

The  conversation,  after  this,  took  a  turn  which  may  read 
ily  be  imagined  by  all  who  have  been  in  the  same  situation, 
and  will,  therefore,  need  no  further  illustration. 

"  Well,  deacon,  railly  I  don't  know  what  to  think  now ; 
there's  my  Joe,  he's  took  and  been  a-courting  that  'ere 
Susan,"  said  Uncle  Jaw. 

This  was  the  introduction  to  one  of  Uncle  Jaw's  periodi 
cal  visits  to  Deacon  Enos,  who  was  sitting  with  his  usual 
air  of  mild  abstraction,  looking  into  the  coals  of  a  bright 
November  fire,  while  his  busy  helpmate  was  industriously 
rattling  her  knitting  needles  by  his  side. 

A  close  observer  might  have  suspected  that  this  was  no 
news  to  the  good  deacon,  who  had  given  a  great  deal  of 
good  advice,  in  private,  to  Master  Joseph  of  late ;  but  he 
only  relaxed  his  features  into  a  quiet  smile,  and  ejaculated, 
"  I  want  to  know  !  " 

"  Yes  ;  and  railly,  deacon,  that  'ere  gal  is  a  rail  pretty  un. 
I  was  a-tellin'  my  folks  that  our  new  minister's  wife  was  a 
fool  to  her." 

"  And  so  your  son  is  going  to  marry  her  ?  "  said  the  good 
lady  ;  "  I  knew  that  long  ago." 

"  Well  —  no  —  not  so  fast ;  ye  see  there 's  two  to  that 


68  LOVE    VERSUS   LAW 

bargain  yet.  You  see,  Joe,  he  never  said  a  word  to  me, 
but  took  and  courted  the  gal  out  of  his  own  head  ;  and 
when  I  come  to  know,  says  I,  '  Joe,'  says  I,  ( that  'ere  gal 
won't  do  for  me ; '  and  I  took  and  tell'd  him,  then,  about 
that  'ere  old  fence,  and  all  about  that  old  mill,  and  them 
medders  of  mine ;  and  I  tell'd  him,  too,  about  that  'ere  lot 
of  Susan's ;  and  I  should  like  to  know,  now,  deacon,  how 
that  lot  business  is  a-going  to  turn  out." 

"  Judge  Smith  and  Squire  Moseley  say  that  my  claim  to 
it  will  stand,"  said  the  deacon. 

"  They  do  ?  "  said  Uncle  Jaw  with  much  satisfaction ; 
"  s'pose,  then,  you  '11  sue,  won't  you  ?  " 

"  I  don't  know,"  replied  the  deacon  meditatively. 

Uncle  Jaw  was  thoroughly  amazed ;  that  any  one  should 
have  doubts  about  entering  suit  for  a  fine  piece  of  land, 
when  sure  of  obtaining  it,  was  a  problem  quite  beyond  his 
powers  of  solving. 

"  You  say  your  son  has  courted  the  girl,"  said  the  dea 
con  after  a  long  pause  ;  "  that  strip  of  land  is  the  best  part 
of  Susan's  share ;  I  paid  down  five  hundred  dollars  on  the 
nail  for  it ;  I  've  got  papers  here  that  Judge  Smith  and 
Squire  Moseley  say  will  stand  good  in  any  court  of  law." 

Uncle  Jaw  pricked  up  his  ears  and  was  all  attention, 
eyeing  with  eager  looks  the  packet ;  but,  to  his  disappoint 
ment,  the  deacon  deliberately  laid  it  into  his  desk,  shut  and 
locked  it,  and  resumed  his  seat. 

"  Now,  railly,"  said  Uncle  Jaw,  "I  should  like  to  know 
the  particulars." 

"  Well,  well,"  said  the  deacon,  "  the  lawyers  will  be  at 
my  house  to-morrow  evening,  and  if  you  have  any  concern 
about  it,  you  may  as  well  come  along." 

Uncle  Jaw  wondered  all  the  way  home  at  what  he  could 
have  done  to  get  himself  into  the  confidence  of  the  old  dea 
con,  who,  he  rejoiced  to  think,  was  a-going  to  "  take  "  and  go 
to  law  like  other  folks. 


LOVE   VERSUS  LAW  69 

The  next  day  there  was  an  appearance  of  some  bustle  and 
preparation  about  the  deacon's  house ;  the  best  room  was 
opened  and  aired  ;  an  ovenful  of  cake  was  baked  ;  and  our 
friend  Joseph,  with  a  face  full  of  business,  was  seen  passing 
to  and  fro,  in  and  out  of  the  house,  from  various  closetings 
with  the  deacon.  The  deacon's  lady  bustled  about  the  house 
with  an  air  of  wonderful  mystery,  and  even  gave  her  direc 
tions  about  eggs  and  raisins  in  a  whisper,  lest  they  should 
possibly  let  out  some  eventful  secret. 

The  afternoon  of  that  day  Joseph  appeared  at  the  house 
of  the  sisters,  stating  that  there  was  to  be  company  at  the 
deacon's  that  evening,  and  he  was  sent  to  invite  them. 

"  Why,  what 's  got  into  the  deacon's  folks  lately,"  said 
Silence,  "  to  have  company  so  often  ?  Joe  Adams,  this  'ere 
is  some  '  cut  up '  of  yours.  Come,  what  are  you  up  to  now  ?  " 

"  Come,  come,  dress  yourselves  and  get  ready,"  said  Jo 
seph  ;  and,  stepping  up  to  Susan,  as  she  was  following 
Silence  out  of  the  room,  he  whispered  something  into  her 
ear,  at  which  she  stopped  short  and  colored  violently. 

"  Why,  Joseph,  what  do  you  mean  ?  " 

"  It  is  so,"  said  he. 

"  No,  no,  Joseph  ;   no,  I  can't,  indeed  I  can't." 

"  But  you  can,  Susan." 

"  Oh,  Joseph,  don't." 

"  Oh,  Susan,  do." 

"  Why,  how  strange,  Joseph  !  " 

"  Come,  come,  my  dear,  you  keep  me  waiting.  If  you 
have  any  objections  on  the  score  of  propriety,  we  will  talk 
about  them  to-morrow  ;  "  and  our  hero  looked  so  saucy  and 
so  resolute  that  there  was  no  disputing  further ;  so,  after  a 
little  more  lingering  and  blushing  on  Susan's  part,  and  a 
few  kisses  and  persuasions  on  the  part  of  the  suitor,  Miss 
Susan  seemed  to  be  brought  to  a  state  of  resignation. 

At  a  table  in  the  middle  of  Uncle  Enos's  north  front  room 
were  seated  the  two  lawyers,  whose  legal  opinion  was  that 


70  LOVE   VERSUS   LAW 

evening  to  be  fully  made  up.  The  younger  of  these,  Squire 
Moseley,  was  a  rosy,  portly,  laughing  little  bachelor,  who 
boasted  that  he  had  offered  himself,  in  rotation,  to  every 
pretty  girl  within  twenty  miles  round,  and,  among  others, 
to  Susan  Jones,  notwithstanding  which  he  still  remained  a 
bachelor,  with  a  fair  prospect  of  being  an  old  one  ;  but  none 
of  these  things  disturbed  the  boundless  flow  of  good  nature 
and  complacency  with  which  he  seemed  at  all  times  full  to 
overflowing.  On  the  present  occasion  he  appeared  to  be  par 
ticularly  in  his  element,  as  if  he  had  some  law  business  in 
hand  remarkably  suited  to  his  turn  of  mind ;  for,  on  finish 
ing  the  inspection  of  the  papers,  he  started  up,  slapped  his 
graver  brother  on  the  back,  made  two  or  three  flourishes 
round  the  room,  and  then  seizing  the  old  deacon's  hand, 
shook  it  violently,  exclaiming,  — 

"  All 's  right,  deacon,  all 's  right !    Go  it !  go  it !  hurrah ! " 

When  Uncle  Jaw  entered,  the  deacon,  without  preface, 
handed  him  a  chair  and  the  papers,  saying,  — 

"  These  papers  are  what  you  wanted  to  see.  I  just  wish 
you  would  read  them  over." 

Uncle  Jaw  read  them  deliberately  over.  "  Didn't  I  tell 
ye  so,  deacon  ?  The  case  is  as  clear  as  a  bell  :  now  ye  will 
go  to  law,  won't  you  ?  " 

"  Look  here,  Mr.  Adams ;  now  you  have  seen  these  pa 
pers,  and  heard  what  's  to  be  said,  I  '11  make  you  an  offer. 
Let  your  son  marry  Susan  Jones,  and  I  '11  burn  these  papers 
and  say  no  more  about  it,  and  there  won't  be  a  girl  in  the 
parish  with  a  finer  portion." 

Uncle  Jaw  opened  his  eyes  with  amazement,  and  looked 
at  the  old  man,  his  mouth  gradually  expanding  wider  and 
wider,  as  if  he  hoped,  in  time,  to  swallow  the  idea. 

"  Well,  now,  I  swan  ! "  at  length  he  ejaculated. 

"  I  mean  just  as  I  say,"  said  the  deacon. 

"  Why,  that  's  the  same  as  giving  the  gal  five  hundred 
dollars  out  of  your  own  pocket,  and  she  ain't  no  relation 
neither." 


LOVE   VERSUS   LAW  71 

"  I  know  it,"  said  the  Deacon  ;  "  but  I  have  said  I  will 
do  it." 

"  What  upon  'arth  for  ?  "  said  Uncle  Jaw. 

"  To  make  peace,"  said  the  deacon,  "  and  to  let  you  know 
that  when  I  say  it  is  better  to  give  up  one's  rights  than  to 
quarrel,  I  mean  so.  I  am  an  old  man  ;  my  children  are 
dead,"  —  his  voice  faltered,  —  "my  treasures  are  laid  up  in 
heaven ;  if  I  can  make  the  children  happy,  why,  I  will. 
When  I  thought  I  had  lost  the  land,  I  made  up  my  mind 
to  lose  it,  and  so  I  can  now." 

Uncle  Jaw  looked  fixedly  on  the  old  deacon,  and  said,  — 

"  Well,  deacon,  I  believe  you.  I  vow,  if  you  hain't  got 
something  ahead  in  t'other  world,  I  'd  like  to  know  who 
has  —  that  's  all ;  so,  if  Joe  has  no  objections,  and  I  rather 
guess  he  won't  have  "  — 

"  The  short  of  the  matter  is,"  said  the  squire,  "  we  '11  have 
a  wedding ;  so  come  on  ;  "  and  with  that  he  threw  open  the 
parlor  door,  where  stood  Susan  and  Joseph  in  a  recess  by 
the  window,  while  Silence  and  the  Rev.  Mr.  Bissel  were 
drawn  up  by  the  fire,  and  the  deacon's  lady  was  sweeping 
up  the  hearth,  as  she  had  been  doing  ever  since  thex  party 
arrived. 

Instantly  Joseph  took  the  hand  of  Susan,  and  led  her  to 
the  middle  of  the  room  ;  the  merry  squire  seized  the  hand 
of  Miss  Silence,  and  placed  her  as  bridesmaid,  and  before 
any  one  knew  what  they  were  about,  the  ceremony  was  in 
actual  progress,  and  the  minister,  having  been  previously 
instructed,  made  the  two  one  with  extraordinary  celerity. 

"What!  what!  what!"  said  Uncle  Jaw.  " Joseph! 
Deacon  !  " 

"  Fair  bargain,  sir,"  said  the  squire.  "  Hand  over  your 
papers,  deacon." 

The  deacon  handed  them,  and  the  squire,  having  read 
them  aloud,  proceeded,  with  much  ceremony,  to  throw  them 
into  the  fire ;  after  which,  in  a  mock  solemn  oration,  he 


72  LOVE    VERSUS   LAW 

gave  a  statement  of  the  whole  affair,  and  concluded  with  a 
grave  exhortation  to  the  new  couple  on  the  duties  of  wed 
lock,  which  unbent  the  risibles  even  of  the  minister  him 
self. 

Uncle  Jaw  looked  at  his  pretty  daughter-in-law,  who 
stood  half  smiling,  half  blushing,  receiving  the  congratula 
tions  of  the  party,  and  then  at  Miss  Silence,  who  appeared 
full  as  much  taken  by  surprise  as  himself. 

"  Well,  well,  Miss  Silence,  these  'ere  young  folks  have 
come  round  us  slick  enough/'  said  he.  "  I  don't  see  but 
we  must  shake  hands  upon  it."  And  the  warlike  powers 
shook  hands  accordingly,  which  was  a  signal  for  general 
merriment. 

As  the  company  were  dispersing,  Miss  Silence  laid  hold  of 
the  good  deacon,  and  by  main  strength  dragged  him  aside. 
"  Deacon,"  said  she,  "  I  take  back  all  that  'ere  I  said  about 
you,  every  word  on't." 

"  Don't  say  any  more  about  it,  Miss  Silence,"  said  the 
good  man ;  "  it 's  gone  by,  and  let  it  go." 

"  Joseph  !  "  said  his  father,  the  next  morning,  as  he  was 
sitting  at  breakfast  with  Joseph  and  Susan,  "  I  calculate  I 
shall  feel  kinder  proud  of  this  'ere  gal !  and  I  '11  tell  you 
what,  I  '11  jest  give  you  that  nice  little  delicate  Stanton  place 
that  I  took  on  Stanton's  mortgage  :  it 's  a  nice  little  place, 
with  green  blinds,  and  flowers,  and  all  them  things,  just 
right  for  Susan." 

And  accordingly,  many  happy  years  flew  over  the  heads 
of  the  young  couple  in  the  Stanton  place,  long  after  the 
hoary  hairs  of  their  kind  benefactor,  the  deacon,  were  laid 
with  reverence  in  the  dust.  Uncle  Jaw  was  so  far  wrought 
upon  by  the  magnanimity  of  the  good  old  man  as  to  be  very 
materially  changed  for  the  better.  Instead  of  quarreling 
in  real  earnest  all  around  the  neighborhood,  he  confined 
himself  merely  to  battling  the  opposite  side  of  every  ques 
tion  with  his  son,  which,  as  the  latter  was  somewhat  of  a 


LOVE   VERSUS   LAW  73 

logician,  afforded  a  pretty  good  field  for  the  exercise  of  his 
powers ;  and  he  was  heard  to  declare  at  the  funeral  of  the 
old  deacon,  that,  "  after  all,  a  man  got  as  much,  and  may  be 
more,  to  go  along  as  the  deacon  did,  than  to  be  all  the  time 
fisting  and  jawing  ;  though  I  tell  you  what  it  is,"  said  he, 
afterwards,  "  7t  ain't  every  one  that  has  the  deacon's  faculty, 
anyhow." 


THE   TEA   KOSE 

THERE  it  stood,  in  its  little  green  vase,  on  a  light  ebony 
stand,  in  the  window  of  the  drawing-room.  The  rich  satin 
curtains,  with  their  costly  fringes,  swept  down  on  either  side 
of  it,  and  around  it  glittered  every  rare  and  fanciful  trifle 
which  wealth  can  offer  to  luxury  ;  and  yet  that  simple  rose 
was  the  fairest  of  them  all.  So  pure  it  looked,  its  white 
leaves  just  touched  with  that  delicious  creamy  tint  peculiar 
to  its  kind ;  its  cup  so  full,  so  perfect ;  its  head  bending  as 
if  it  were  sinking  and  melting  away  in  its  own  richness  — 
Oh,  when  did  ever  man  make  anything  to  equal  the  living, 
perfect  flower  ? 

But  the  sunlight  that  streamed  through  the  window  re 
vealed  something  fairer  than  the  rose.  Reclined  on  an 
ottoman,  in  a  deep  recess,  and  intently  engaged  with  a  book, 
rested  what  seemed  the  counterpart  of  that  so  lovely  flower. 
That  cheek  so  pale,  that  fair  forehead  so  spiritual,  that  coun 
tenance  so  full  of  high  thought,  those  long,  downcast  lashes, 
and  the  expression  of  the  beautiful  mouth,  sorrowful,  yet 
subdued  and  sweet  —  it  seemed  like  the  picture  of  a  dream. 

"  Florence  !  Florence  !  "  echoed  a  merry  and  musical 
voice,  in  a  sweet,  impatient  tone.  Turn  your  head,  reader, 
and  you  will  see  a  light  and  sparkling  maiden,  the  very 
model  of  some  little  willful  elf,  born  of  mischief  and  motion, 
with  a  dancing  eye,  a  foot  that  scarcely  seems  to  touch  the 
carpet,  and  a  smile  so  multiplied  by  dimples  that  it  seems 
like  a  thousand  smiles  at  once.  "  Come,  Florence,  I  say," 
said  the  little  sprite,  "  put  down  that  wise,  good,  and  excel 
lent  volume,  and  descend  from  your  cloud,  and  talk  with  a 
poor  little  mortal." 


THE   TEA  ROSE  75 

The  fair  apparition,  thus  adjured,  obeyed  ;  and,  looking 
up,  revealed  just  such  eyes  as  you  expected  to  see  beneath 
such  lids  —  eyes  deep,  pathetic,  and  rich  as  a  strain  of  sad 
music. 

"  I  say,  cousin,"  said  the  "  bright  ladye,"  "  I  have  been 
thinking  what  you  are  to  do  with  your  pet  rose  when  you 
go  to  New  York,  as,  to  our  consternation,  you  are  deter 
mined  to  do ;  you  know  it  would  be  a  sad  pity  to  leave  it 
with  such  a  scatterbrain  as  I  am.  I  do  love  flowers,  that  is 
a  fact ;  that  is,  I  like  a  regular  bouquet,  cut  off  and  tied  up, 
to  carry  to  a  party  ;  but  as  to  all  this  tending  and  fussing, 
which  is  needful  to  keep  them,  growing,  I  have  no  gifts  in 
that  line." 

"  Make  yourself  easy  as  to  that,  Kate,"  said  Florence, 
with  a  smile ;  "I  have  no  intention  of  calling  upon  your 
talents  ;  I  have  an  asylum  in  view  for  my  favorite." 

"  Oh,  then  you  know  just  what  I  was  going  to  say.  Mrs. 
Marshall,  I  presume,  has  been  speaking  to  you ;  she  was 
here  yesterday,  and  I  was  quite  pathetic  upon  the  subject, 
telling  her  the  loss  your  favorite  would  sustain,  and  so  forth  ; 
and  she  said  how  delighted  she  would  be  to  have  it  in  her 
greenhouse,  it  is  in  such  a  fine  state  now,  so  full  of  buds. 
I  told  her  I  knew  you  would  like  to  give  it  to  her,  you  are 
so  fond  of  Mrs.  Marshall,  you  know." 

"  Now  Kate,  I  am  sorry,  but  I  have  otherwise  engaged 
it." 

"  Whom  can  it  be  to  ?    you  have  so  few  intimates  here." 

"  Oh,  it  is  only  one  of  my  odd  fancies." 

"  But  do  tell  me,  Florence." 

"  Well,  cousin,  you  know  the  little  pale  girl  to  whom  wre 
give  sewing." 

"  What !  little  Mary  Stephens  ?  How  absurd  !  Florence, 
this  is  just  another  of  your  motherly,  old-maidish  ways  — 
dressing  dolls  for  poor  children,  making  bonnets  and  knit 
ting  socks  for  all  the  little  dirty  babies  in  the  region  round 


76  THE   TEA   ROSE 

about.  I  do  believe  you  have  made  more  calls  in  those 
two  vile,  ill-smelling  alleys  back  of  our  house,  than  ever 
you  have  in  Chestnut  Street,  though  you  know  everybody 
is  half  dying  to  see  you  5  and  now,  to  crown  all,  you  must 
give  this  choice  little  bijou  to  a  seamstress  girl,  when  one 
of  your  most  intimate  friends,  in  your  own  class,  would 
value  it  so  highly.  What  in  the  world  can  people  in  their 
circumstances  want  of  flowers  ?  " 

"  Just  the  same  as  I  do,"  replied  Florence  calmly. 
"  Have  you  not  noticed  that  the  little  girl  never  comes  here 
without  looking  wistfully  at  the  opening  buds  ?  And  don't 
you  remember,  the  other  morning,  she  asked  me  so  prettily 
if  I  would  let  her  mother  come  and  see  it,  she  was  so  fond 
of  flowers  ?  " 

"  But,  Florence,  only  think  of  this  rare  flower  standing 
on  a  table  with  ham,  eggs,  cheese,  and  flour,  and  stifled  in 
that  close  little  room  where  Mrs.  Stephens  and  her  daugh 
ter  manage  to  wash,  iron,  cook,  and  nobody  knows  what  be 
sides." 

"  Well,  Kate,  and  if  I  were  obliged  to  live  in  one  coarse 
room,  and  wash,  and  iron,  and  cook,  as  you  say,  — if  I  had 
to  spend  every  moment  of  my  time  in  toil,  with  no  prospect 
from  my  window  but  a  brick  wall  and  dirty  lane,  —  such  a 
flower  as  this  would  be  untold  enjoyment  to  me." 

"  Pshaw  !  Florence  —  all  sentiment :  poor  people  have  no 
time  to  be  sentimental.  Besides,  I  don't  believe  it  will 
grow  with  them  ;  it  is  a  greenhouse  flower,  and  used  to 
delicate  living." 

"  Oh,  as  to  that,  a  flower  never  inquires  whether  its  owner 
is  rich  or  poor ;  and  Mrs.  Stephens,  whatever  else  she  has 
not,  has  sunshine  of  as  good  quality  as  this  that  streams 
through  our  window.  The  beautiful  things  that  God  makes 
are  his  gift  to  all  alike.  You  will  see  that  my  fair  rose 
will  be  as  well  and  cheerful  in  Mrs.  Stephens' s  room  as  in 


THE   TEA  HOSE  77 

"  Well,  after  all,  how  odd !  When  one  gives  to  poor 
people,  one  wants  to  give  them  something  useful  —  a  bushel 
of  potatoes,  a  ham,  and  such  things.'7 

"  Why,  certainly,  potatoes  and  ham  must  be  supplied  ; 
but,  having  ministered  to  the  first  and  most  craving  wants, 
why  not  add  any  other  little  pleasures  or  gratifications  we 
may  have  it  in  our  power  to  bestow  ?  I  know  there  are 
many  of  the  poor  who  have  fine  feeling  and  a  keen  sense 
of  the  beautiful,  which  rusts  out  and  dies  because  they  are 
too  hard  pressed  to  procure  it  any  gratification.  Poor  Mrs. 
Stephens,  for  example  :  I  know  she  would  enjoy  birds,  and 
flowers,  and  music,  as  much  as  I  do.  I  have  seen  her  eye 
light  up  as  she  looked  on  these  things  in  our  drawing-room, 
and  yet  not  one  beautiful  thing  can  she  command.  From 
necessity,  her  room,  her  clothing,  all  she  has,  must  be 
coarse  and  plain.  You  should  have  seen  the  almost  rapture 
she  and  Mary  felt  when  I  offered  them  my  rose." 

"  Dear  me !  all  this  may  be  true,  but  I  never  thought  of 
it  before.  I  never  thought  that  these  hard-working  people 
had  any  ideas  of  taste !  " 

"  Then  why  do  you  see  the  geranium  or  rose  so  carefully 
nursed  in  the  old  cracked  teapot  in  the  poorest  room,  or  the 
morning-glory  planted  in  a  box  and  twined  about  the  win 
dow  ?  Do  not  these  show  that  the  human  heart  yearns  for 
the  beautiful  in  all  ranks  of  life  ?  You  remember,  Kate, 
how  our  washerwoman  sat  up  a  whole  night,  after  a  hard 
day's  work,  to  make  her  first  baby  a  pretty  dress  to  be  bap 
tized  in." 

"  Yes,  and  I  remember  how  I  laughed  at  you  for  making 
such  a  tasteful  little  cap  for  it." 

"  Well,  Katy,  I  think  the  look  of  perfect  delight  with 
which  the  poor  mother  regarded  her  baby  in  its  new  dress 
and  cap  was  something  quite  worth  creating :  I  do  believe 
she  could  not  have  felt  more  grateful  if  I  had  sent  her  a 
barrel  of  flour." 


78  THE   TEA  ROSE 

"  Well,  I  never  thought  before  of  giving  anything  to  the 
poor  but  what  they  really  needed,  and  I  have  always  been 
willing  to  do  that  when  I  could  without  going  far  out  of 
my  way." 

"  Well,  cousin,  if  our  Heavenly  Father  gave  to  us  after 
this  mode,  we  should  have  only  coarse,  shapeless  piles  of 
provisions  lying  about  the  world,  instead  of  all  this  beauti 
ful  variety  of  trees,  and  fruits,  and  flowers." 

"  Well,  well,  cousin,  I  suppose  you  are  right  —  but  have 
mercy  on  my  poor  head ;  it  is  too  small  to  hold  so  many 
new  ideas  all  at  once  —  so  go  on  your  own  way."  And 
the  little  lady  began  practicing  a  waltzing  step  before  the 
glass  with  great  satisfaction. 

It  was  a  very  small  room,  lighted  by  only  one  window. 
There  was  no  carpet  on  the  floor ;  there  was  a  clean,  but 
coarsely  covered  bed  in  one  corner  ;  a  cupboard,  with  a  few 
dishes  and  plates,  in  the  other  ;  a  chest  of  drawers  ;  and  be 
fore  the  window  stood  a  small  cherry  stand,  quite  new,  and, 
indeed,  it  was  the  only  article  in  the  room  that  seemed  so. 

A  pale,  sickly -looking  woman  of  about  forty  was  leaning 
back  in  her  rocking-chair,  her  eyes  closed  and  her  lips  com 
pressed  as  if  in  pain.  She  rocked  backward  and  forward  a 
few  minutes,  pressed  her  hand  hard  upon  her  eyes,  and  then 
languidly  resumed  her  fine  stitching,  on  which  she  had  been 
busy  since  morning.  The  door  opened,  and  a  slender  little 
girl  of  about  twelve  years  of  age  entered,  her  large  blue  eyes 
dilated  and  radiant  with  delight  as  she  bore  in  the  vase  with 
the  rose-tree  in  it. 

"  Oh,  see,  mother,  see  !  Here  is  one  in  full  bloom,  and 
two  more  half  out,  and  ever  so  many  more  pretty  buds 
peeping  out  of  the  green  leaves." 

The  poor  woman's  face  brightened  as  she  looked,  first  on 
the  rose  and  then  on  her  sickly  child,  on  whose  face  she 
had  not  seen  so  bright  a  color  for  months. 


THE   TEA   EOSE  79 

"  God  bless  her  !  "  she  exclaimed  unconsciously. 

"  Miss  Florence  —  yes,  I  knew  you  would  feel  so,  mother. 
Does  it  not  make  your  head  feel  better  to  see  such  a  beauti 
ful  flower  ?  Now,  you  will  not  look  so  longingly  at  the 
flowers  in  the  market,  for  we  have  a  rose  that  is  handsomer 
than  any  of  them.  Why,  it  seems  to  me  it  is  worth  as 
much  to  us  as  our  whole  little  garden  used  to  be.  Only 
see  how  many  buds  there  are  !  Just  count  them,  and  only 
smell  the  flower !  Now,  where  shall  we  set  it  up  ?  "  And 
Mary  skipped  about,  placing  her  flower  first  in  one  position 
and  then  in  another,  and  walking  off  to  see  the  effect,  till 
her  mother  gently  reminded  her  that  the  rose-tree  could  not 
preserve  its  beauty  without  sunlight. 

"  Oh,  yes,  truly,"  said  Mary  ;  "  well,  then,  it  must  stand 
here  on  our  new  stand.  How  glad  I  am  that  we  have  such 
a  handsome  new  stand  for  it !  it  will  look  so  much  better." 
And  Mrs.  Stephens  laid  down  her  work,  and  folded  a  piece 
of  newspaper,  on  which  the  treasure  was  duly  deposited. 

"  There,"  said  Mary,  watching  the  arrangement  eagerly, 
"  that  will  do  —  no,  for  it  does  not  show  both  the  opening 
buds ;  a  little  farther  around  —  a  little  more ;  there,  that 
is  right ;  "  and  then  Mary  walked  around  to  view  the  rose 
in  various  positions,  after  which  she  urged  her  mother  to  go 
with  her  to  the  outside,  and  see  how  it  looked  there.  "  How 
kind  it  was  in  Miss  Florence  to  think  of  giving  this  to  us  !  " 
said  Mary  ;  "  though  she  had  done  so  much  for  us,  and 
given  us  so  many  things,  yet  this  seems  the  best  of  all,  be 
cause  it  seems  as  if  she  thought  of  us,  and  knew  just  how 
we  felt ;  and  so  few  do  that,  you  know,  mother." 

What  a  bright  afternoon  that  little  gift  made  in  that  little 
room !  How  much  faster  Mary's  fingers  flew  the  livelong 
day  as  she  sat  sewing  by  her  mother !  and  Mrs.  Stephens, 
in  the  happiness  of  her  child,  almost  forgot  that  she  had  a 
headache,  and  thought,  as  she  sipped  her  evening  cup  of 
tea,  that  she  felt  stronger  than  she  had  for  some  time. 


80  THE   TEA   ROSE 

That  rose !  its  sweet  influence  died  not  with  the  first  day. 
Through  all  the  long,  cold  winter,  the  watching,  tending, 
cherishing  that  flower  awakened  a  thousand  pleasant  trains 
of  thought,  that  beguiled  the  sameness  and  weariness  of 
their  life.  Every  day  the  fair,  growing  thing  put  forth 
some  fresh  beauty  —  a  leaf,  a  bud,  a  new  shoot,  and  con 
stantly  awakened  fresh  enjoyment  in  its  possessors.  As  it 
stood  in  the  window,  the  passer-by  would  sometimes  stop 
and  gaze,  attracted  by  its  beauty,  and  then  proud  and  happy 
was  Mary;  nor  did  even  the  serious  and  care-worn  widow 
notice  with  indifference  this  tribute  to  the  beauty  of  their 
favorite. 

But  little  did  Florence  think,  when  she  bestowed  the 
gift,  that  there  twined  about  it  an  invisible  thread  that 
reached  far  and  brightly  into  the  web  of  her  destiny. 

One  cold  afternoon  in  early  spring,  a  tall  and  graceful 
gentleman  called  at  the  lowly  room  to  pay  for  the  making 
of  some  linen  by  the  inmates.  He  was  a  stranger  and  way 
farer  recommended  through  the  charity  of  some  of  Mrs. 
Stephens's  patrons.  As  he  turned  to  go,  his  eye  rested  ad 
miringly  on  the  rose-tree  ;  and  he  stopped  to  gaze  at  it. 

"  How  beautiful !  "  said  he. 

"  Yes,"  said  little  Mary  ;  "  and  it  was  given  to  us  by  a 
lady  as  sweet  and  beautiful  as  that  is.77 

"Ah,"  said  the  stranger,  turning  upon  her  a  pair  of 
bright  dark  eyes,  pleased  and  rather  struck  by  the  commu 
nication  ;  "  and  how  came  she  to  give  it  to  you,  my  little 
girl  ?  " 

"  Oh,  because  we  are  poor  and  mother  is  sick,  and  we 
never  can  have  anything  pretty.  We  used  to  have  a  garden 
once ;  and  we  loved  flowers  so  much,  and  Miss  Florence 
found  it  out,  and  so  she  gave  us  this." 

"  Florence  !  "  echoed  the  stranger. 

"  Yes,  Miss  Florence  FEstrange  —  a  beautiful  lady. 
They  say  she  was  from  foreign  parts  ;  but  she  speaks  Eng 
lish  just  like  other  ladies,  only  sweeter." 


THE   TEA  EOSE  81 

"  Is  she  here  now  ?  is  she  in  this  city  ?  "  said  the  gen 
tleman  eagerly. 

"  No  ;  she  left  some  months  ago,"  said  the  widow,  no 
ticing  the  shade  of  disappointment  on  his  face.  "  But," 
said  she,  "  you  can  find  out  all  about  her  at  her  aunt's, 
Mrs.  Carlysle's,  No  10 Street." 

A  short  time  after,  Florence  received  a  letter  in  a  hand 
writing  that  made  her  tremble.  During  the  many  early 
years  of  her  life  spent  in  France  she  had  well  learned  to 
know  that  writing  —  had  loved  as  a  woman  like  her  loves 
only  once  ;  but  there  had  been  obstacles  of  parents  and 
friends,  long  separation,  long  suspense,  till,  after  anxious 
years,  she  had  believed  the  ocean  had  closed  over  that  hand 
and  heart ;  and  it  was  this  that  had  touched  with  such  pen 
sive  sorrow  the  lines  in  her  lovely  face. 

But  this  letter  told  that  he  was  living  —  that  he  had 
traced  her,  even  as  a  hidden  streamlet  may  be  traced,  by  the 
freshness,  the  verdure  of  heart,  which  her  deeds  of  kindness 
had  left  wherever  she  had  passed.  Thus  much  said,  our 
readers  need  no  help  in  finishing  my  story  for  themselves. 


AUNT    MARY 

SINCE  sketching  character  is  the  mode,  I  too  take  up  my 
pencil,  not  to  make  you  laugh,  though  peradventure  it  may 
be  —  to  get  you  to  sleep. 

I  am  now  a  tolerably  old  gentleman  —  an  old  bachelor, 
moreover  —  and,  what  is  more  to  the  point,  an  unpretending 
and  sober-minded  one.  Lest,  however,  any  of  the  ladies 
should  take  exceptions  against  me  in  the  very  outset,  I  will 
merely  remark,  en  passant,  that  a  man  can  sometimes  be 
come  an  old  bachelor  because  he  has  too  much  heart  as  well 
as  too  little. 

Years  ago  —  before  any  of  my  readers  were  born  —  I  was 
a  little  good-for-naught  of  a  boy,  of  precisely  that  unlucky 
kind  who  are  always  in  everybody's  way,  and  always  in 
mischief.  I  had,  to  watch  over  my  uprearing,  a  father 
and  mother,  and  a  whole  army  of  older  brothers  and  sisters. 
My  relatives  bore  a  very  great  resemblance  to  other  human 
beings,  neither  good  angels  nor  the  opposite  class,  but,  as 
mathematicians  say,  "  in  the  mean  proportion." 

As  I  have  before  insinuated,  I  was  a  sort  of  family  scape 
grace  among  them,  and  one  on  whose  head  all  the  domestic 
trespasses  were  regularly  visited,  either  by  real,  actual  desert 
or  by  imputation.  For  this  order  of  things,  there  was,  I 
confess,  a  very  solid  and  serious  foundation,  in  the  constitu 
tion  of  my  mind.  Whether  I  was  born  under  some  cross 
eyed  planet,  or  whether  I  was  fairy-smitten  in  my  cradle, 
certain  it  is  that  I  was,  from  the  dawn  of  existence,  a  sort 
of  "  Murad  the  Unlucky  ;  "  an  out-of-time,  out-of-place,  out- 
of-form  sort  of  a  boy,  with  whom,  nothing  prospered.  Who 


AUNT  MARY  83 

always  left  open  doors  in  cold  weather  ?  It  was  Henry. 
Who  was  sure  to  upset  his  coffee-cup  at  breakfast,  or  to 
knock  over  his  tumbler  at  dinner,  or  to  prostrate  saltcellar, 
pepper  box,  and  mustard  pot,  if  he  only  happened  to  move 
his  arm  ?  Why,  Henry.  Who  was  plate-breaker  general 
for  the  family  ?  It  was  Henry.  Who  tangled  mamma's 
silks  and  cottons,  and  tore  up  the  last  newspaper  for  papa, 
or  threw  down  old  Phoebe's  clothes-horse,  with  all  her  clean 
ironing  thereupon  ?  Why,  Henry. 

Now  all  this  was  no  "  malice  prepense  "  in  me,  for  I  sol 
emnly  believe  that  I  was  the  best-natured  boy  in  the  world ; 
but  something  was  the  matter  with  the  attraction  of  cohesion, 
or  the  attraction  of  gravitation  —  with  the  general  dispensa 
tion  of  matter  around  me  —  that,  let  me  do  what  I  would, 
things  would  fall  down,  and  break,  or  be  torn  and  damaged, 
if  I  only  came  near  them  ;  and  my  unluckiness  in  any  matter 
seemed  in  exact  proportion  to  my  carefulness.  If  anybody 
in  the  room  with  me  had  a  headache,  or  any  kind  of  nervous 
irritability,  which  made  it  particularly  necessary  for  others 
to  be  quiet,  and  if  I  was  in  an  especial  desire  unto  the  same, 
I  was  sure,  while  stepping  around  on  tiptoe,  to  fall  headlong 
over  a  chair,  which  would  give  an  introductory  push  to  the 
shovel,  which  would  fall  upon  the  tongs,  which  would  ani 
mate  the  poker,  and  all  together  would  set  in  action  two  or 
three  sticks  of  wood,  and  down  they  would  come  together, 
with  just  that  hearty,  sociable  sort  of  racket,  which  showed 
that  they  were  disposed  to  make  as  much  of  the  opportunity 
as  possible.  In  the  same  manner,  everything  that  came  into 
my  hand,  or  was  at  all  connected  with  me,  was  sure  to  lose 
by  it.  If  I  rejoiced  in  a  clean  apron  in  the  morning,  I  was 
sure  to  make  a  full-length  prostration  thereupon  on  my  way 
to  school,  and  come  home  nothing  better,  but  rather  worse. 
If  I  was  sent  on  an  errand,  I  was  sure  either  to  lose  my 
money  in  going,  or  my  purchases  in  returning ;  and  on  these 
occasions  my  mother  would  often  comfort  me  with  the  re- 


84  AUNT  MARY 

flection  that  it  was  well  that  my  ears  were  fastened  to  my 
head,  or  I  should  lose  them  too.  Of  course,  I  was  a  fair 
mark  for  the  exhortatory  powers,  not  only  of  my  parents, 
but  of  all  my  aunts,  uncles,  and  cousins,  to  the  third  and 
fourth  generation,  who  ceased  not  to  reprove,  rebuke,  and 
exhort  with  all  long-suffering  and  doctrine. 

All  this  would  have  been  very  well  if  nature  had  not 
gifted  me  with  a  very  unnecessary  and  uncomfortable  capacity 
of  feeling,  which,  like  a  refined  ear  for  music,  is  undesirable, 
because,  in  this  world,  one  meets  with  discord  ninety-nine 
times  where  he  meets  with  harmony  once.  Much,  therefore, 
as  I  furnished  occasion  to  be  scolded  at,  I  never  became 
used  to  scolding,  so  that  I  was  just  as  much  galled  by  it 
the  forty-first  time  as  the  first.  There  was  no  such  thing 
as  philosophy  in  me  :  I  had  just  that  unreasonable  heart 
which  is  not  conformed  unto  the  nature  of  things,  neither  in 
deed  can  be.  I  was  timid,  and  shrinking,  and  proud  ;  I  was 
nothing  to  any  one  around  me  but  an  awkward,  unlucky  boy ; 
nothing  to  my  parents  but  one  of  half  a  dozen  children,  whose 
faces  were  to  be  washed  and  stockings  mended  on  Saturday 
afternoon.  If  I  was  very  sick,  I  had  medicine  and  the  doc 
tor  ;  if  I  was  a  little  sick,  I  was  exhorted  unto  patience ;  and 
if  I  was  sick  at  heart,  I  was  left  to  prescribe  for  myself. 

Now,  all  this  was  very  well :  what  should  a  child  need 
but  meat,  and  drink,  and  room  to  play,  and  a  school  to 
teach  him  reading  and  writing,  and  somebody  to  take  care  of 
him  when  sick  ?  Certainly,  nothing.  But  the  feelings  of 
grown-up  children  exist  in  the  mind  of  little  ones  oftener 
than  is  supposed  ;  and  I  had,  even  at  this  early  day,  the 
same  keen  sense  of  all  that  touched  the  heart  wrong ; 
the  same  longing  for  something  which  should  touch  it 
aright ;  the  same  discontent,  with  latent,  matter-of-course 
affection,  and  the  same  craving  for  sympathy,  which  has 
been  the  unprofitable  fashion  of  this  world  in  all  ages.  And 
no  human  being  possessing  such  constitutionals  has  a  better 


AUNT   MARY  85 

chance  of  being  made  unhappy  by  them  than  the  backward, 
uninteresting,  wrong-doing  child.  We  can  all  sympathize, 
to  some  extent,  with  men  and  women  :  but  how  few  can  go 
back  to  the  sympathies  of  childhood ;  can  understand  the 
desolate  insignificance  of  not  being  one  of  the  grown-up 
people  ;  of  being  sent  to  bed,  to  be  out  of  the  way  in  the 
evening,  and  to  school,  to  be  out  of  the  way  in  the  morn 
ing  ;  of  manifold  similar  grievances  and  distresses,  which  the 
child  has  no  elocution  to  set  forth,  and  the  grown  person 
no  imagination  to  conceive. 

When  I  was  seven  years  old,  I  was  told  one  morning, 
with  considerable  domestic  acclamation,  that  Aunt  Mary 
was  coming  to  make  us  a  visit ;  and  so,  when  the  carriage 
that  brought  her  stopped  at  our  door,  I  pulled  off  my  dirty 
apron,  and  ran  in  among  the  crowd  of  brothers  and  sisters 
to  see  what  was  coming.  I  shall  not  describe  her  first  ap 
pearance,  for,  as  I  think  of  her,  I  begin  to  grow  somewhat 
sentimental,  in  spite  of  my  spectacles,  and  might,  perhaps, 
talk  a  little  nonsense. 

Perhaps  every  man,  whether  married  or  unmarried,  who 
has  lived  to  the  age  of  fifty  or  thereabouts,  has  seen  some 
woman  who,  in  his  mind,  is  the  woman,  in  distinction  from 
all  others.  She  may  not  have  been  a  relative  ;  she  may 
not  have  been  a  wife  ;  she  may  simply  have  shone  on  him 
from  afar ;  she  may  be  remembered  in  the  distance  of  years 
as  a  star  that  is  set,  as  music  that  is  hushed,  as  beauty  and 
loveliness  faded  forever ;  but  remembered  she  is  with  in 
terest,  with  fervor,  with  enthusiasm ;  with  all  that  heart 
can  feel,  and  more  than  words  can  tell.  To  me  there  has 
been  but  one  such,  and  that  is  she  whom  I  describe.  "  Was 
she  beautiful  ?  "  you  ask.  I  also  will  ask  you  one  question : 
"  If  an  angel  from  heaven  should  dwell  in  human  form,  and 
animate  any  human  face,  would  not  that  face  be  lovely  ? 
It  might  not  be  beautiful,  but  would  it  not  be  lovely  ?  " 
She  was  not  beautiful  except  after  this  fashion. 


86  AUNT   MARY 

How  well  I  remember  her,  as  she  used  sometimes  to  sit 
thinking,  with  her  head  resting  on  her  hand,  her  face  mild 
and  placid,  with  a  quiet  October  sunshine  in  her  blue  eyes, 
and  an  ever-present  smile  over  her  whole  countenance.  I 
remember  the  sudden  sweetness  of  look  when  any  one  spoke 
to  her  ;  the  prompt  attention,  the  quick  comprehension  of 
things  before  you  uttered  them,  the  obliging  readiness  to 
leave  for  you  whatever  she  was  doing. 

To  those  who  mistake  occasional  pensiveness  for  melan 
choly,  it  might  seem  strange  to  say  that  my  Aunt  Mary 
was  always  happy.  Yet  she  was  so.  Her  spirits  never 
rose  to  buoyancy,  and  never  sunk  to  despondency.  I  know 
that  it  is  an  article  in  the  sentimental  confession  of  faith 
that  such  a  character  cannot  be  interesting.  For  this  im 
pression  there  is  some  ground.  The  placidity  of  a  medium 
commonplace  mind  is  uninteresting,  but  the  placidity  of 
a  strong  and  well  -  governed  one  borders  on  the  sublime. 
Mutability  of  emotion  characterizes  inferior  orders  of  being ; 
but  He  who  combines  all  interest,  all  excitement,  all  per 
fection,  is  "  the  same  yesterday,  to-day,  and  forever.'7  And 
if  there  be  anything  sublime  in  the  idea  of  an  almighty 
mind,  in  perfect  peace  itself,  and,  therefore,  at  leisure  to  be 
stow  all  its  energies  on  the  wants  of  others,  there  is  at  least 
a  reflection  of  the  same  sublimity  in  the  character  of  that 
human  being  who  has  so  quieted  and  governed  the  world 
within,  that  nothing  is  left  to  absorb  sympathy  or  distract 
attention  from  those  around. 

Such  a  woman  was  my  Aunt  Mary.  Her  placidity  was 
not  so  much  the  result  of  temperament  as  of  choice.  She 
had  every  susceptibility  of  suffering  incident  to  the  noblest 
and  most  delicate  construction  of  mind ;  but  they  had  been 
so  directed  that,  instead  of  concentrating  thought  on  self, 
they  had  prepared  her  to  understand  and  feel  for  others. 
She  was,  beyond  all  things  else,  a  sympathetic  person,  and 
her  character,  like  the  green  in  a  landscape,  was  less  remark- 


AUNT   MAKY  87 

able  for  what  it  was  in  itself  than  for  its  perfect  and  beauti 
ful  harmony  with  all  the  coloring  and  shading  around  it. 
Other  women  have  had  talents,  others  have  been  good  ;  but 
no  woman  that  ever  I  knew  possessed  goodness  and  talent 
in  union  with  such  an  intuitive  perception  of  feelings,  and 
such  a  faculty  of  instantaneous  adaptation  to  them.  The 
most  troublesome  thing  in  this  world  is  to  be  condemned 
to  the  society  of  a  person  who  can  never  understand  any 
thing  you  say  unless  you  say  the  whole  of  it,  making  your 
commas  and  periods  as  you  go  along ;  and  the  most  desirable 
thing  in  the  world  is  .to  live  with  a  person  who  saves  you 
all  the  trouble  of  talking,  by  knowing  just  what  you  mean 
before  you  begin  to  speak. 

Something  of  this  kind  of  talent  I  began  to  feel,  to  my 
great  relief,  when  Aunt  Mary  came  into  the  family.  I 
remember  the  very  first  evening,  as  she  sat  by  the  hearth, 
surrounded  by  all  the  family,  her  eye  glanced  on  me  with 
an  expression  that  let  me  know  she  saw  me ;  and  when  the 
clock  struck  eight,  and  my  mother  proclaimed  that  it  was 
my  bedtime,  my  countenance  fell  as  I  moved  sorrowfully 
from  the  back  of  her  rocking-chair,  and  thought  how  many 
beautiful  stories  Aunt  Mary  would  tell  after  I  was  gone 
to  bed.  She  turned  towards  me  with  such  a  look  of  real 
understanding,  such  an  evident  insight  into  the  case,  that 
I  went  into  banishment  with  a  lighter  heart  than  ever  I 
did  before.  How  very  contrary  is  the  obstinate  estimate  of 
the  heart  to  the  rational  estimate  of  worldly  wisdom  !  Are 
there  not  some  who  can  remember  when  one  word,  one  look, 
or  even  the  withholding  of  a  word,  has  drawn  their  heart 
more  to  a  person  than  all  the  substantial  favors  in  the 
world  ?  By  ordinary  acceptation,  substantial  kindness 
respects  the  necessaries  of  animal  existence ;  while  those 
wants  which  are  peculiar  to  mind,  and  will  exist  with  it 
forever,  by  equally  correct  classification,  are  designated  as 
sentimental  ones,  the  supply  of  which,  though  it  will  excite 


88  AUNT   MARY 

more  gratitude  in  fact,  ought  not  to  in  theory.  Before 
Aunt  Mary  had  lived  with  us  a  month,  I  loved  her  beyond 
anybody  in  the  world ;  and  a  utilitarian  would  have  been 
amused  in  ciphering  out  the  amount  of  favors  which  pro 
duced  this  result.  It  was  a  look  —  a  word  —  a  smile  ;  it 
was  that  she  seemed  pleased  with  my  new  kite ;  that  she 
rejoiced  with  me  when  I  learned  to  spin  a  top ;  that  she 
alone  seemed  to  estimate  my  proficiency  in  playing  ball  and 
marbles  ;  that  she  never  looked  at  all  vexed  when  I  upset 
her  workbox  upon  the  floor ;  that  she  received  all  my  awk 
ward  gallantry  and  maladroit  helpfulness  as  if  it  had  been 
in  the  best  taste  in  the  world ;  that  when  she  was  sick, 
she  insisted  on  letting  rne  wait  on  her,  though  I  made  my 
customary  havoc  among  the  pitchers  and  tumblers  of  her 
room,  and  displayed,  through  my  zeal  to  please,  a  more 
than  ordinary  share  of  insufficiency  for  the  station.  She 
also  was  the  only  person  that  ever  I  conversed  with,  and 
I  used  to  wonder  how  anybody  who  could  talk  all  about 
matters  and  things  with  grown-up  persons  could  talk  so 
sensibly  about  marbles,  and  hoops,  and  skates,  and  all  sorts 
of  little-boy  matters  ;  and  I  will  say,  by  the  bye,  that  the 
same  sort  of  speculation  has  often  occurred  to  the  minds  of 
older  people  in  connection  with  her.  She  knew  the  value 
of  varied  information  in  making  a  woman,  not  a  pedant, 
but  a  sympathetic,  companionable  being ;  and  such  she  was 
to  almost  every  class  of  mind. 

She  had,  too,  the  faculty  of  drawing  others  up  to  her 
level  in  conversation,  so  that  I  would  often  find  myself 
going  on  in  most  profound  style  while  talking  with  her, 
and  would  wonder,  when  I  was  through,  whether  I  was 
really  a  little  boy  still. 

When  she  had  enlightened  us  many  months,  the  time 
came  for  her  to  take  leave,  and  she  besought  my  mother  to 
give  me  to  her  for  company.  All  the  family  wondered 
what  she  could  find  to  like  in  Henry ;  but  if  she  did  like 
me,  it  was  no  matter,  and  so  was  the  case  disposed  of. 


AUNT   MARY  89 

From  that  time  I  lived  with  her,  —  and  there  are  some 
persons  who  can  make  the  word  "  live  "  signify  much  more 
than  it  commonly  does,  —  and  she  wrought  on  my  character 
all  those  miracles  which  benevolent  genius  can  work.  She 
quieted  my  heart,  directed  my  feelings,  unfolded  my  mind, 
and  educated  me,  not  harshly  or  by  force,  but  as  the  blessed 
sunshine  educates  the  flower,  into  full  and  perfect  life  ;  and 
when  all  that  was  mortal  of  her  died  to  this  world,  her 
words  and  deeds  of  unutterable  love  shed  a  twilight  around 
her  memory  that  will  fade  only  in  the  brightness  of 
heaven. 


FRANKNESS 

THERE  is  one  kind  of  frankness,  which  is  the  result  of 
perfect  unsuspiciousness,  and  which  requires  a  measure  of 
ignorance  of  the  world  and  of  life  :  this  kind  appeals  to  our 
generosity  and  tenderness.  There  is  another,  which  is  the 
frankness  of  a  strong  but  pure  mind,  acquainted  with  life, 
clear  in  its  discrimination  and  upright  in  its  intention,  yet 
above  disguise  or  concealment :  this  kind  excites  respect. 
The  first  seems  to  proceed  simply  from  impulse,  the  second 
from  impulse  and  reflection  united  ;  the  first  proceeds,  in  a 
measure,  from  ignorance,  the  second  from  knowledge  ;  the 
first  is  born  from  an  undoubting  confidence  in  others,  the 
second  from  a  virtuous  and  well-grounded  reliance  on  one's 
self. 

Now,  if  you  suppose  that  this  is  the  beginning  of  a  ser 
mon  or  of  a  Fourth  of  July  oration,  you  are  very  much  mis 
taken,  though,  I  must  confess,  it  hath  rather  an  uncertain 
sound.  I  merely  prefaced  it  to  a  little  sketch  of  character, 
which  you  may  look  at  if  you  please,  though  I  am  not  sure 
you  will  like  it.  It  was  said  of  Alice  H.  that  she  had  the 
mind  of  a  man,  the  heart  of  a  woman,  and  the  face  of  an 
angel  —  a  combination  that  all  my  readers  will  think  pecu 
liarly  happy.  There  never  was  a  woman  who  was  so  unlike 
the  mass  of  society  in  her  modes  of  thinking  and  acting, 
yet  so  generally  popular.  But  the  most  remarkable  thing 
about  her  was  her  proud  superiority  to  all  disguise,  in 
thought,  word,  and  deed.  She  pleased  you  ;  for  she  spoke 
out  a  hundred  things  that  you  would  conceal,  and  spoke 
them  with  a  dignified  assurance  that  made  you  wonder 


FRANKNESS  91 

that  you  had  ever  hesitated  to  say  them  yourself.  Nor  did 
this  unreserve  appear  like  the  weakness  of  one  who  could 
not  conceal,  or  like  a  determination  to  make  war  on  the 
forms  of  society.  It  was  rather  a  calm,  well-guided  integ 
rity,  regulated  by  a  just  sense  of  propriety  ;  knowing  when 
to  be  silent,  but  speaking  the  truth  when  it  spoke  at  all. 

Her  extraordinary  frankness  often  beguiled  superficial 
observers  into  supposing  themselves  fully  acquainted  with 
her  long  before  they  were  so,  as  the  beautiful  transparency 
of  some  lakes  is  said  to  deceive  the  eye  as  to  their  depth ; 
yet  the  longer  you  knew  her,  the  more  variety  and  compass 
of  character  appeared  through  the  same  transparent  medium. 
But  you  may  just  visit  Miss  Alice  for  half  an  hour  to-night, 
and  judge  for  yourselves.  You  may  walk  into  this  little 
parlor.  There  sits  Miss  Alice  on  that  sofa,  sewing  a  pair 
of  lace  sleeves  into  a  satin  dress,  in  which  peculiarly  angelic 
employment  she  may  persevere  till  we  have  finished  another 
sketch. 

Do  you  see  that  pretty  little  lady,  with  sparkling  eyes, 
elastic  form,  and  beautiful  hand  and  foot,  sitting  opposite  to 
her  ?  She  is  a  belle :  the  character  is  written  in  her  face 
—  it  sparkles  from  her  eye  —  it  dimples  in  her  smile,  and 
pervades  the  whole  woman. 

But  there  —  Alice  has  risen,  and  is  gone  to  the  mirror, 
and  is  arranging  the  finest  auburn  hair  in  the  world  in  the 
most  tasteful  manner.  The  little  lady  watches  every  motion 
as  comically  as  a  kitten  watches  a  pin-ball. 

"  It  is  all  in  vain  to  deny  it,  Alice  —  you  are  really  anx 
ious  to  look  pretty  this  evening,"  said  she. 

"  I  certainly  am,"  said  Alice  quietly. 

"  Aye,  and  you  hope  you  shall  please  Mr.  A.  and  Mr.  B.," 
said  the  little  accusing  angel. 

"  Certainly  I  do,"  said  Alice,  as  she  twisted  her  fingers 
in  a  beautiful  curl. 

"  Well,  I  would  not  tell  of  it,  Alice,  if  I  did." 


92  FRANKNESS 

"  Then  you  should  not  ask  me,"  said  Alice. 

"  I  declare,  Alice  !  " 

"  And  what  do  you  declare  ?  " 

"  I  never  saw  such  a  girl  as  you  are !  " 

"  Very  likely,"  said  Alice,  stooping  to  pick  up  a  pin. 

"  Well,  for  my  part,"  said  the  little  lady,  "  I  never  would 
take  any  pains  to  make  anybody  like  me  —  particularly  a 
gentleman." 

"I  would,"  said  Alice,  "if  they  would  not  like  me  with 
out." 

"  Why,  Alice  !  I  should  not  think  you  were  so  fond  of 
admiration." 

"  I  like  to  be  admired  very  much,"  said  Alice,  returning 
to  the  sofa,  "  and  I  suppose  everybody  else  does." 

"  I  don't  care  about  admiration,"  said  the  little  lady.  "  I 
would  be  as  well  satisfied  that  people  should  n't  like  me  as 
that  they  should." 

"  Then,  cousin,  I  think  it 's  a  pity  we  all  like  you  so 
well,"  said  Alice,  with  a  good-humored  smile.  If  Miss 
Alice  had  penetration,  she  never  made  a  severe  use  of  it. 

"  But  really,  cousin,"  said  the  little  lady,  "  I  should  not 
think  such  a  girl  as  you  would  think  anything  about  dress, 
or  admiration,  and  all  that." 

"  I  don't  know  what  sort  of  a  girl  you  think  I  am,"  said 
Alice,  "  but,  for  my  own  part,  I  only  pretend  to  be  a  com 
mon  human  being,  and  am  not  ashamed  of  common  human 
feelings.  If  God  has  made  us  so  that  we  love  admiration, 
why  should  we  not  honestly  say  so  ?  I  love  it  —  you  love 
it  —  everybody  loves  it;  and  why  should  not  everybody 
say  it  ?  " 

"  Why,  yes,"  said  the  little  lady,  "  I  suppose  everybody 
has  a  —  has  a  —  a  general  love  for  admiration.  I  am  willing 
to  acknowledge  that  I  have  ;  but " — 

"  But  you  have  no  love  for  it  in  particular,"  said  Alice, 
"  I  suppose  you  mean  to  say  ;  that  it  is  just  the  way  the 


FRANKNESS  93 

matter  is  commonly  disposed  of.  Everybody  is  willing  to 
acknowledge  a  general  wish  for  the  good  opinion  of  others, 
but  half  the  world  are  ashamed  to  own  it  when  it  comes  to 
a  particular  case.  Now  I  have  made  up  my  mind  that  if 
it  is  correct  in  general,  it  is  correct  in  particular ;  and  I 
mean  to  own  it  both  ways.'7 

"  But,  somehow,  it  seems  mean,"  said  the  little  lady. 

"It  is  mean  to  live  for  it,  to  be  selfishly  engrossed  in  it, 
but  not  mean  to  enjoy  it  when  it  comes,  or  even  to  seek 
it,  if  we  neglect  no  higher  interest  in  doing  so.  All  that 
God  made  us  to  feel  is  dignified  and  pure,  unless  we  pervert 
it." 

"But,  Alice,  I  never  heard  any  person  speak  out  so 
frankly  as  you  do." 

"  Almost  all  that  is  innocent  and  natural  may  be  spoken 
out ;  and  as  for  that  which  is  not  innocent  and  natural,  it 
ought  riot  even  be  thought." 

"  But  can  everything  be  spoken  that  may  be  thought  ?  " 
said  the  lady. 

"  No  ;  we  have  an  instinct  which  teaches  us  to  be  silent 
sometimes  ;  but,  if  we  speak  at  all,  let  it  be  in  simplicity 
and  sincerity." 

"  Now,  for  instance,  Alice,"  said  the  lady,  "  it  is  very  in 
nocent  and  natural,  as  you  say,  to  think  this,  that,  and  the 
other  nice  thing  of  yourself,  especially  when  everybody  is 
telling  you  of  it ;  now  would  you  speak  the  truth  if  any 
one  asked  you  on  this  point  ?  " 

"  If  it  were  a  person  who  had  a  right  to  ask,  and  if  it 
were  a  proper  time  and  place,  I  would,"  said  Alice. 

"  Well,  then,"  said  the  bright  lady,  "  I  ask  you,  Alice, 
in  this  very  proper  time  and  place,  do  you  think  that  you 
are  handsome  ?  " 

"Now,  I  suppose  you  expect  me  to  make  a  courtesy  to 
every  chair  in  the  room  before  I  answer,"  said  Alice ;  "  but, 
dispensing  with  that  ceremony,  I  will  tell  you  fairly,  I 
think  I  am." 


94  FRANKNESS 

"  Do  you  think  that  you  are  good  ?  " 

"Not  entirely/'  said  Alice. 

"  Well,  but  don't  you  think  you  are  better  than  most 
people  ?  " 

"As  far  as  I  can  tell,  I  think  I  am  better  than  some 
people  ;  but  really,  cousin,  I  don't  trust  my  own  judgment 
in  this  matter,"  said  Alice. 

"  Well,  Alice,  one  more  question.  Do  you  think  James 
Martyrs  likes  you  or  me  best  ?  " 

"  I  do  not  know,"  said  Alice. 

"  I  did  not  ask  you  what  you  knew,  but  what  you 
thought,"  said  the  lady  ;  "  you  must  have  some  thought 
about  it." 

"  Well,  then,  I  think  he  likes  me  best,"  said  Alice. 

Just  then  the  door  opened,  and  in  walked  the  identical 
James  Martyrs.  Alice  blushed,  looked  a  little  comical,  and 
went  on  with  her  sewing,  while  the  little  lady  began,  — 

"  Really,  Mr.  James,  I  wish  you  had  come  a  minute 
sooner,  to  hear  Alice's  confessions." 

"  What  has  she  confessed  ?  "  said  James. 

"  Why,  that  she  is  handsomer  and  better  than  most  folks." 

"  That  's  nothing  to  be  ashamed  of,"  said  James. 

"  Oh,  that 's  not  all ;  she  wants  to  look  pretty,  and  loves 
to  be  admired,  and  all"  — 

"  It  sounds  very  much  like  her,"  said  James,  looking  at 
Alice. 

"  Oh,  but  besides  that,"  said  the  lady,  "  she  has  been 
preaching  a  discourse  in  justification  of  vanity  and  self- 
love  "  — 

"  And  next  time  you  shall  take  notes  when  I  preach," 
said  Alice,  "  for  I  don't  think  your  memory  is  remarkably 
happy." 

"  You  see,  James,"  said  the  lady,  "  that  Alice  makes  it  a 
point  to  say  exactly  the  truth  when  she  speaks  at  all,  and 
I  've  been  puzzling  her  with  questions.  I  really  wish  you 


FRANKNESS  95 

would  ask  her  some,  and  see  what  she  will  say.  But, 
mercy  !  there  is  Uncle  C.  come  to  take  me  to  ride.  I  must 
run."  And  off  flew  the  little  humming-bird,  leaving  James 
and  Alice  tete-a-tete. 

"  There  really  is  one  question  "  —  said  James,  clearing 
his  voice. 

Alice  looked  up. 

"  There  is  one  question,  Alice,  which  I  wish  you  would 
answer." 

Alice  did  not  inquire  what  the  question  was,  but  began  to 
look  very  solemn  ;  and  just  then  the  door  was  shut,  and 
so  I  never  knew  what  the  question  was,  —  only  I  observed 
that  James  Martyrs  seemed  in  some  seventh  heaven  for  a 
week  afterwards,  and  —  and  —  you  can  finish  for  yourself, 
lady. 


COUSIN    WILLIAM 

IN  a  stately  red  house,  in  one  of  the  villages  of  New 
England,  lived  the  heroine  of  our  story.  She  had  every 
advantage  of  rank  and  wealth,  for  her  father  was  a  deacon 
of  the  church,  and  owned  sheep,  and  oxen,  and  exceeding 
much  substance.  There  was  an  appearance  of  respectabil 
ity  and  opulence  about  all  the  demesnes.  The  house  stood 
almost  concealed  amid  a  forest  of  apple-trees,  in  spring 
blushing  with  blossoms,  and  in  autumn  golden  with  fruit. 
And  near  by  might  be  seen  the  garden,  surrounded  by  a 
red  picket  fence,  inclosing  all  sorts  of  magnificence.  There, 
in  autumn,  might  be  seen  abundant  squash  vines,  which 
seemed  puzzled  for  room  where  to  bestow  themselves  ;  and 
bright  golden  squashes,  and  full-orbed  yellow  pumpkins, 
looking  as  satisfied  as  the  evening  sun  when  he  has  just 
had  his  face  washed  in  a  shower,  and  is  sinking  soberly  to 
bed.  There  were  superannuated  seed  cucumbers,  enjoying 
the  pleasures  of  a  contemplative  old  age  ;  and  Indian  corn, 
nicely  done  up  in  green  silk,  with  a  specimen  tassel  hang 
ing  at  the  end  of  each  ear.  The  beams  of  the  summer 
sun  darted  through  rows  of  crimson  currants  abounding  on 
bushes  by  the  fence,  while  a  sulky  black  currant  bush  sat 
scowling  in  one  corner,  a  sort  of  garden  curiosity. 

But  time  would  fail  us  were  we  to  enumerate  all  the 
wealth  of  Deacon  Israel  Taylor.  He  himself  belonged  to 
that  necessary  class  of  beings,  who,  though  remarkable  for 
nothing  at  all,  are  very  useful  in  filling  up  the  links  of 
society.  Far  otherwise  was  his  sister-in-law,  Mrs.  Abigail 
Evetts,  who,  on  the  demise  of  the  deacon's  wife,  had  as 
sumed  the  reins  of  government  in  the  household. 


COUSIN   WILLIAM  97 

This  lady  was  of  the  same  opinion  that  has  animated 
many  illustrious  philosophers,  namely,  that  the  affairs  of 
this  world  need  a  great  deal  of  seeing  to  in  order  to  have 
them  go  on  prosperously  ;  and  although  she  did  not,  like 
them,  engage  in  the  supervision  of  the  universe,  she  made 
amends  by  unremitting  diligence  in  the  department  under 
her  care.  In  her  mind  there  was  an  evident  necessity  that 
every  one  should  be  up  and  doing  :  Monday,  because  it 
was  washing-day  ;  Tuesday,  because  it  was  ironing-day  ; 
Wednesday,  because  it  was  baking  day  ;  Thursday,  because 
to-morrow  was  Friday  ;  and  so  on  to  the  end  of  the  week. 
Then  she  had  the  care  of  reminding  all  in  the  house  of 
everything  each  was  to  do  from  week's  end  to  week's  end ; 
and  she  was  so  faithful  in  this  respect,  that  scarcely  an  ori 
ginal  act  of  volition  took  place  in  the  family.  The  poor 
deacon  was  reminded  when  he  went  out  and  when  he  came 
in,  when  he  sat  down  and  when  he  rose  up,  so  that  an  act 
of  omission  could  only  have  been  committed  through  sheer 
malice  prepense. 

But  the  supervision  of  a  whole  family  of  children  afforded 
to  a  lady  of  her  active  turn  of  mind  more  abundant  matter 
of  exertion.  To  see  that  their  faces  were  washed,  their 
clothes  mended,  and  their  catechism  learned ;  to  see  that 
they  did  not  pick  the  flowers,  nor  throw  stones  at  the 
chickens,  nor  sophisticate  the  great  house  dog,  was  an  accu 
mulation  of  care  that  devolved  almost  entirely  on  Mrs.  Abi 
gail,  so  that,  by  her  own  account,  she  lived  and  throve  by 
a  perpetual  miracle. 

The  eldest  of  her  charge,  at  the  time  this  story  begins, 
was  a  girl  just  arrived  at  young  ladyhood,  and  her  name 
was  Mary.  Now  we  know  that  people  very  seldom  have 
stories  written  about  them  who  have  not  sylph-like  forms 
and  glorious  eyes,  or,  at  least,  "  a  certain  inexpressible  charm 
diffused  over  their  whole  person."  But  stories  have  of  late 
so  much  abounded  that  they  actually  seem  to  have  used  up 


98  COUSIN   WILLIAM 

all  the  eyes,  hair,  teeth,  lips,  and  forms  necessary  for  a 
heroine,  so  that  no  one  can  now  pretend  to  find  an  original 
collection  wherewith  to  set  one  forth.  These  things  con 
sidered,  I  regard  it  as  fortunate  that  my  heroine  was  not  a 
beauty.  She  looked  neither  like  a  sylph,  nor  an  oread,  nor 
a  fairy ;  she  had  neither  Vair  distingue  nor  Vair  magni- 
fique,  but  bore  a  great  resemblance  to  a  real  mortal  girl, 
such  as  you  might  pass  a  dozen  of  without  any  particular 
comment  —  one  of  those  appearances  which,  though  com 
mon  as  water,  may,  like  that,  be  colored  any  way  by  the 
associations  you  connect  with  it.  Accordingly,  a  faultless 
taste  in  dress,  a  perfect  ease  and  gayety  of  manner,  a  con 
stant  flow  of  kindly  feeling,  seemed  in  her  case  to  produce 
all  the  effect  of  beauty.  Her  manners  had  just  dignity 
enough  to  repel  impertinence  without  destroying  the  careless 
freedom  and  sprightliness  in  which  she  commonly  indulged. 
No  person  had  a  merrier  run  of  stories,  songs,  and  village 
traditions,  and  all  those  odds  and  ends  of  character  which 
form  the  materials  for  animated  conversation.  She  had  read, 
too,  everything  she  could  find  :  Rollin's  History,  and  Scott's 
Family  Bible,  that  stood  in  the  glass  bookcase  in  the  best 
room,  and  an  odd  volume  of  Shakespeare,  and  now  and  then 
one  of  Scott's  novels,  borrowed  from  a  somewhat  literary 
family  in  the  neighborhood.  She  also  kept  an  album  to 
write  her  thoughts  in,  and  was  in  a  constant  habit  of  cutting 
out  all  the  pretty  poetry  from  the  corners  of  the  newspapers, 
besides  drying  forget-me-nots  and  rosebuds  in  memory  of 
different  particular  friends,  with  a  number  of  other  little 
sentimental  practices  to  which  young  ladies  of  sixteen  and 
thereabout  are  addicted.  She  was  also  endowed  with  great 
constructiveness  ;  so  that,  in  these  days  of  ladies'  fairs,  there 
was  nothing  from  bellows-needlebooks  down  to  web-footed 
pincushions  to  which  she  could  not  turn  her  hand.  Her 
sewing  certainly  was  extraordinary  (we  think  too  little  is 
made  of  this  in  the  accomplishments  of  heroines)  ;  her  stitch- 


COUSIN   WILLIAM  99 

ing  was  like  rows  of  pearls,  and  her  cross-stitching  was  fairy- 
like  ;  and  for  sewing  over  and  over,  as  the  village  school- 
ma'am  hath  it,  she  had  not  her  equal.  And  what  shall  we 
say  of  her  pies  and  puddings  ?  They  would  have  converted 
the  most  reprobate  old  bachelor  in  the  world.  And  then  her 
sweeping  and  dusting !  "  Many  daughters  have  done  vir 
tuously,  but  thou  excellest  them  all  ! " 

And  now,  what  do  you  suppose  is  coming  next  ?  Why, 
a  young  gentleman,  of  course ;  for  about  this  time  comes  to 
settle  in  the  village,  and  take  charge  of  the  academy,  a  cer 
tain  William  Barton.  Now,  if  you  wish  to  know  more  par 
ticularly  who  he  was,  we  only  wish  we  could  refer  you  to 
Mrs.  Abigail,  who  was  most  accomplished  in  genealogies  and 
old  wives'  fables,  and  she  would  have  told  you  that  "  her 
gran'ther,  Ike  Evetts,  married  a  wife  who  was  second  cousin 
to  Peter  Scranton,  who  was  great-uncle  to  Polly  Moseley, 
whose  daughter  Mary  married  William  Barton's  father,  just 
about  the  time  old  Squire  Peter's  house  was  burned  down." 
And  then  would  follow  an  account  of  the  domestic  his 
tory  of  all  branches  of  the  family  since  they  came  over  from 
England.  Be  that  as  it  may,  it  is  certain  that  Mrs.  Abi 
gail  denominated  him  cousin,  and  that  he  came  to  the  dea 
con's  to  board;  and  he  had  not  been  there  more  than  a 
week,  and  made  sundry  observations  on  Miss  Mary,  before 
he  determined  to  call  her  cousin,  too,  which  he  accomplished 
in  the  most  natural  way  in  the  world. 

Mary  was  at  first  somewhat  afraid  of  him,  because  she 
had  heard  that  he  had  studied  through  all  that  was  to  be 
studied  in  Greek,  and  Latin,  and  German  too  ;  and  she  saw 
a  library  of  books  in  his  room,  that  made  her  sigh  every 
time  she  looked  at  them,  to  think  how  much  there  was  to 
be  learned  of  which  she  was  ignorant.  But  all  this  wore 
away,  and  presently  they  were  the  best  friends  in  the  world. 
He  gave  her  books  to  read,  and  he  gave  her  lessons  in 
French,  nothing  puzzled  by  that  troublesome  verb  which 


100  COUSIN   WILLIAM 

must  be  first  conjugated,  whether  in  French,  Latin,  or  Eng 
lish.  Then  he  gave  her  a  deal  of  good  advice  about  the 
cultivation  of  her  mind  and  the  formation  of  her  charac 
ter,  all  of  which  was  very  improving,  and  tended  greatly  to 
consolidate  their  friendship.  But,  unfortunately  for  Mary, 
William  made  quite  as  favorable  an  impression  on  the  fe 
male  community  generally  as  he  did  on  her,  having  distin 
guished  himself  on  certain  public  occasions,  such  as  deliver 
ing  lectures  on  botany,  and  also,  at  the  earnest  request  of 
the  Fourth  of  July  committee,  pronounced  an  oration  which 
covered  him  with  glory.  He  had  been  known,  also,  to 
write  poetry,  and  had  a  retired  and  romantic  air  greatly 
bewitching  to  those  who  read  Bulwer's  novels.  In  short,  it 
was  morally  certain,  according  to  all  rules  of  evidence,  that 
if  he  had  chosen  to  pay  any  lady  of  the  village  a  dozen  visits 
a  week,  she  would  have  considered  it  as  her  duty  to  enter 
tain  him. 

William  did  visit ;  for,  like  many  studious  people,  he 
found  a  need  for  the  excitement  of  society ;  but,  whether  it 
was  party  or  singing-school,  he  walked  home  with  Mary,  of 
course,  in  as  steady  and  domestic  a  manner  as  any  man  who 
has  been  married  a  twelvemonth.  His  air  in  conversing 
with  her  was  inevitably  more  confidential  than  with  any 
other  one,  and  this  was  cause  for  envy  in  many  a  gentle 
breast,  and  an  interesting  diversity  of  reports  with  regard 
to  her  manner  of  treating  the  young  gentleman  went  forth 
into  the  village. 

"  I  wonder  Mary  Taylor  will  laugh  and  joke  so  much 
with  William  Barton  in  company,"  said  one.  "  Her  man 
ners  are  altogether  too  free,"  said  another.  "  It  is  evident 
she  has  designs  upon  him,"  remarked  a  third.  "  And  she 
cannot  even  conceal  it,"  pursued  a  fourth. 

Some  sayings  of  this  kind  at  length  reached  the  ears  of 
Mrs.  Abigail,  who  had  the  best  heart  in  the  world,  and  was 
so  indignant  that  it  might  have  done  your  heart  good  to  see 


COUSIN   WILLIAM  101 

her.  Still  she  thought  it  showed  that  "  the  girl  needed  ad 
vising;  "  and  "she  should  talk  to  Mary  about  the  matter." 

But  she  first  concluded  to  advise  with  William  on  the 
subject  j  and,  therefore,  after  dinner  the  same  day,  while  he 
was  looking  over  a  treatise  on  trigonometry  or  conic  sec 
tions,  she  commenced  upon  him  :  — 

"  Our  Mary  is  growing  up  a  fine  girl." 

William  was  intent  on  solving  a  problem,  and  only  un 
derstanding  that  something  had  been  said,  mechanically 
answered  "Yes." 

"  A  little  wild  or  so,"  said  Mrs.  Abigail. 

"  I  know  it,"  said  William,  fixing  his  eyes  earnestly  on 
E,  F,  B,  C. 

"  Perhaps  you  think  her  a  little  too  talkative  and  free 
with  you  sometimes  ;  you  know  girls  do  not  always  think 
what  they  do." 

"  Certainly,"  said  William,  going  on  with  his  problem. 

"I  think  you  had  better  speak  to  her  about  it,"  said 
Mrs.  Abigail. 

"  I  think  so  too,"  said  William,  musing  over  his  com 
pleted  work,  till  at  length  he  arose,  put  it  in  his  pocket, 
and  went  to  school. 

Oh,  this  unlucky  concentrativeness  !  How  many  shock 
ing  things  a  man  may  indorse  by  the  simple  habit  of  saying 
"  Yes  "  and  "  No,"  when  he  is  not  hearing  what  is  said  to 
him. 

The  next  morning,  when  William  was  gone  to  the  acad 
emy,  and  Mary  was  washing  the  breakfast  things,  Aunt 
Abigail  introduced  the  subject  with  great  tact  and  delicacy 
by  remarking,  — 

"  Mary,  I  guess  you  had  better  be  rather  less  free  with 
William  than  you  have  been." 

"  Free !  "  said  Mary,  starting,  and  nearly  dropping  the 
cup  from  her  hand  ;  "  why,  aunt,  what  do  you  mean  ?  " 

"  Why,  Mary,  you  must  not  always  be  around  so  free  in 


102  COUSIN  WILLIAM 

talking  with  him,  at  home,  and  in  company,  and  every 
where.  It  won't  do."  The  color  started  into  Mary's 
cheek,  and  mounted  even  to  her  forehead,  as  she  answered 
with  a  dignified  air,  — 

"  I  have  not  been  too  free  ;  I  know  what  is  right  and 
proper;  I  have  not  been  doing  anything  that  was  im 
proper." 

Now,  when  one  is  going  to  give  advice,  it  is  very  trouble 
some  to  have  its  necessity  thus  called  in  question  ;  and  Mrs. 
Abigail,  who  was  fond  of  her  own  opinion,  felt  called  upon 
to  defend  it. 

"  Why,  yes,  you  have,  Mary  ;  everybody  in  the  village 
notices  it." 

"  I  don't  care  what  everybody  in  the  village  says.  I 
shall  always  do  what  I  think  proper,"  retorted  the  young 
lady  ;  "  I  know  Cousin  William  does  not  think  so." 

"  Well,  I  think  he  does,  from  some  things  I  have  heard 
him  say." 

"  Oh,  aunt !  what  have  you  heard  him  say  ?  "  said  Mary, 
nearly  upsetting  a  chair  in  the  eagerness  with  which  she 
turned  to  her  aunt. 

"  Mercy  on  us  !  you  need  not  knock  the  house  down, 
Mary.  I  don't  remember  exactly  about  it,  only  that  his 
way  of  speaking  made  me  think  so." 

"  Oh,  aunt !  do  tell  me  what  it  was,  and  all  about  it," 
said  Mary,  following  her  aunt,  who  went  around  dusting 
the  furniture. 

Mrs.  Abigail,  like  most  obstinate  people,  who  feel  that 
they  have  gone  too  far,  and  yet  are  ashamed  to  go  back, 
took  refuge  in  an  obstinate  generalization,  and  only  asserted 
that  she  had  heard  him  say  things,  as  if  he  did  not  quite 
like  her  ways.  This  is  the  most  consoling  of  all  methods 
in  which  to  leave  a  matter  of  this  kind  for  a  person  of 
active  imagination.  Of  course,  in  five  minutes,  Mary  had 
settled  in  her  mind  a  list  of  remarks  that  would  have  been 


COUSIN   WILLIAM  103 

suited  to  any  of  her  village  companions,  as  coming  from 
her  cousin.  All  the  improbability  of  the  thing  vanished  in 
the  absorbing  consideration  of  its  possibility  ;  and,  after  a 
moment's  reflection,  she  pressed  her  lips  together  in  a  very 
firm  way,  and  remarked  that  "  Mr.  Barton  would  have  no 
occasion  to  say  such  things  again." 

It  was  very  evident,  from  her  heightened  color  and  dig 
nified  air,  that  her  state  of  mind  was  very  heroical.  As  for 
poor  Aunt  Abigail,  she  felt  sorry  she  had  vexed  her,  and 
addressed  herself  most  earnestly  to  her  consolation,  remark 
ing,  "  Mary,  I  don't  suppose  William  meant  anything.  He 
knows  you  don't  mean  anything  wrong." 

"  Don't  mean  anything  wrong  !  "    said  Mary  indignantly. 

"  Why,  child,  he  thinks  you  don't  know  much  about 
folks  and  things,  and  if  you  have  been  a  little ';  — 

"  But  I  have  not  been.  It  was  he  that  talked  with  me 
first.  It  was  he  that  did  everything  first.  He  called  me 
cousin  —  and  he  is  my  cousin." 

"  No,  child,  you  are  mistaken  ;  for  you  remember  his 
grandfather  was  "  — 

"  I  don't  care  who  his  grandfather  was ;  he  has  no  right 
to  think  of  me  as  he  does." 

"  Now,  Mary,  don't  go  to  quarreling  with  him ;  he  can't 
help  his  thoughts,  you  know." 

"I  don't  care  what  he  thinks,"  said  Mary,  flinging  out 
of  the  room  with  tears  in  her  eyes. 

Now,  when  a  young  lady  is  in  such  a  state  of  affliction, 
the  first  thing  to  be  done  is  to  sit  down  and  cry  for  two 
hours  or  more,  which  Mary  accomplished  in  the  most  thor 
ough  manner ;  in  the  mean  while  making  many  reflections 
on  the  instability  of  human  friendships,  and  resolving  never 
to  trust  any  one  again  as  long  as  she  lived,  and  thinking 
that  this  was  a  cold  and  hollow-hearted  world,  together  with 
many  other  things  she  had  read  in  books,  but  never  realized 
so  forcibly  as  at  present.  But  what  was  to  be  done  ?  Of 


104  COUSIN   WILLIAM 

course  she  did  not  wish  to  speak  a  word  to  William  again, 
amd  wished  he  did  not  board  there ;  and  finally  she  put  on 
her  bonnet,  and  determined  to  go  over  to  her  other  aunt's 
in  the  neighborhood,  and  spend'  the  day,  so  that  she  might 
not  see  him  at  dinner. 

But  it  so  happened  that  Mr.  William,  on  coming  home 
at  noon,  found  himself  unaccountably  lonesome  during 
school  recess  for  dinner,  and  hearing  where  Mary  was,  de 
termined  to  call  after  school  at  night  at  her  aunt's,  and 
attend  her  home.  Accordingly,  in  the  afternoon,  as  Mary 
was  sitting  in  the  parlor  with  two  or  three  cousins,  Mr. 
William  entered.  Mary  was  so  anxious  to  look  just  as  if 
nothing  was  the  matter,  that  she  turned  away  her  head,  and 
began  to  look  out  of  the  window  just  as  the  young  gen 
tleman  came  up  to  speak  to  her.  So,  after  he  had  twice 
inquired  after  her  health,  she  drew  up  very  coolly,  and 
said,  — 

"  Did  you  speak  to  me,  sir  ?  " 

William  looked  a  little  surprised  at  first,  but  seating  him 
self  by  her,  "  To  be  sure,"  said  he  ;  "  and  I  came  to  know 
why  you  ran  away  without  leaving  any  message  for  me  ?  " 

"  It  did  not  occur  to  me,"  said  Mary,  in  the  dry  tone 
which,  in  a  lady,  means,  "  I  will  excuse  you  from  any  fur 
ther  conversation,  if  you  please."  William  felt  as  if  there 
was  something  different  from  common  in  all  this,  but  thought 
that  perhaps  he  was  mistaken,  and  so  continued  :  — 

"  What  a  pity,  now,  that  you  should  be  so  careless  of  me, 
when  I  was  so  thoughtful  of  you  !  I  have  come  all  this 
distance  to  see  how  you  do." 

"  I  am  sorry  to  have  given  you  the  trouble,"   said  Mary. 

"  Cousin,  are  you  unwell  to-day  ?  "   said  William. 

"  No,  sir,"   said  Mary,  going  on  with  her  sewing. 

There  was  something  so  marked  and  decisive  in  all  this 
that  William  could  scarcely  believe  his  ears.  He  turned 
away  and  commenced  a  conversation  with  a  young  lady ; 


COUSIN  WILLIAM  105 

and  Mary,  to  show  that  she  could  talk  if  she  chose,  com 
menced  relating  a  story  to  her  cousins,  and  presently  they 
were  all  in  a  loud  laugh. 

"  Mary  has  been  full  of  her  knick-knacks  to-day,"  said  her 
old  uncle,  joining  them. 

William  looked  at  her  :  she  never  seemed  brighter  or  in 
better  spirits,  and  he  began  to  think  that  even  Cousin  Mary 
might  puzzle  a  man  sometimes. 

He  turned  away,  and  began  a  conversation  with  old  Mr. 
Zachary  Coan  on  the  raising  of  buckwheat  —  a  subject  which 
evidently  required  profound  thought,  for  he  never  looked 
more  grave,  not  to  say  melancholy. 

Mary  glanced  that  way,  and  was  struck  with  the  sad  and 
almost  severe  expression  with  which  he  was  listening  to  the 
details  of  Mr.  Zachary,  and  was  convinced  that  he  was  no 
more  thinking  of  buckwheat  than  she  was. 

"  I  never  thought  of  hurting  his  feelings  so  much,"  said 
she,  relenting ;  "  after  all,  he  has  been  very  kind  to  me.  But 
he  might  have  told  me  about  it,  and  not  somebody  else.'7 
And  hereupon  she  cast  another  glance  towards  him. 

William  was  not  talking,  but  sat  with  his  eyes  fixed  on 
the  snuffer-tray,  with  an  intense  gravity  of  gaze  that  quite 
troubled  her,  and  she  could  not  help  again  blaming  herself. 

"  To  be  sure  !  Aunt  was  right ;  he  could  not  help  his 
thoughts.  I  will  try  to  forget  it,"  thought  she. 

Now,  you  must  not  think  Mary  was  sitting  still  and  gazing 
during  this  soliloquy.  No,  she  was  talking  and  laughing,  ap 
parently  the  most  unconcerned  spectator  in  the  room.  So 
passed  the  evening  till  the  little  company  broke  up. 

"  I  am  ready  to  attend  you  home,"  said  William,  in  a  tone 
of  cold  and  almost  haughty  deference. 

"  I  am  obliged  to  you,"  said  the  young  lady,  in  a  similar 
tone,  "  but  I  shall  stay  all  night ;  "  then,  suddenly  changing 
her  tone,  she  said,  "No,  I  cannot  keep  it  up  any  longer. 
I  will  go  home  with  you,  Cousin  William." 


106  COUSIN   WILLIAM 

"  Keep  up  what  ?  "  said  William,  with  surprise. 

Mary  was  gone  for  her  bonnet.  She  came  out,  took  his 
arm,  and  walked  on  a  little  way. 

"  You  have  advised  me  always  to  be  frank,  cousin,"  said 
Mary,  "  and  I  must  and  will  be  ;  so  I  shall  tell  you  all, 
though  I  dare  say  it  is  not  according  to  rule." 

"  All  what  ?  "  said  William. 

"  Cousin,"  said  she,  not  at  all  regarding  what  he  said, 
"I  was  very  much  vexed  this  afternoon." 

"  So  I  perceived,  Mary." 

"  Well,  it  is  vexatious,"  she  continued,  "  though,  after 
all,  we  cannot  expect  people  to  think  us  perfect ;  but  I  did 
not  think  it  quite  fair  in  you  not  to  tell  me" 

"  Tell  you  what,  Mary  ?  " 

Here  they  came  to  a  place  where  the  road  turned  through 
a  small  patch  of  woods.  It  was  green  and  shady,  and  en 
livened  by  a  lively  chatterbox  of  a  brook.  There  was  a 
mossy  trunk  of  a  tree  that  had  fallen  beside  it,  and  made  a 
pretty  seat.  The  moonlight  lay  in  little  patches  upon  it,  as 
it  streamed  down  through  the  branches  of  the  trees.  It  was 
a  fairy-looking  place,  and  Mary  stopped  and  sat  down,  as  if 
to  collect  her  thoughts.  After  picking  up  a  stick,  and  play 
ing  a  moment  in  the  water,  she  began  :  — 

"  After  all,  cousin,  it  was  very  natural  in  you  to  say  so, 
if  you  thought  so ;  though  I  should  not  have  supposed  you 
would  think  so." 

"  Well,  I  should  be  glad  if  I  could  know  what  it  is,"  said 
William  in  a  tone  of  patient  resignation. 

"  Oh,  I  forgot  that  I  had  not  told  you,"  said  she,  pushing 
back  her  hat,  and  speaking  like  one  determined  to  go  through 
with  the  thing.  "  Why,  cousin,  I  have  been  told  that  you 
spoke  of  my  manners  towards  yourself  as  being  freer  —  more 
—  obtrusive  than  they  should  be.  And  now,"  said  she, 
her  eyes  flashing,  "  you  see  it  was  not  a  very  easy  thing  to 
tell  you,  but  I  began  with  being  frank,  and  I  will  be  so, 
for  the  sake  of  satisfying  myself." 


COUSIN    WILLIAM  107 

To  this  William  simply  replied,  "  Who  told  you  this, 
Mary  ?  " 

"  My  aunt." 

"  Did  she  say  I  said  it  to  her  ?  " 

"  Yes  ;  and  I  do  not  so  much  object  to  your  saying  it  as 
to  your  thinking  it,  for  you  know  I  did  not  force  myself  on 
your  notice  ;  it  was  you  who  sought  my  acquaintance  and 
won  my  confidence  ;  and  that  you,  above  all  others,  should 
think  of  me  in  this  way !  " 

"  I  never  did  think  so,  Mary,"  said  William  quietly. 

"  Nor  ever  said  so  ?  " 

"  Never.  I  should  think  you  might  have  known  it, 
Mary." 

"But"  — said  Mary. 

"  But,"  said  William  firmly,  "  Aunt  Abigail  is  certainly 
mistaken." 

"  Well,  I  am  glad  of  it,"  said  Mary,  looking  relieved, 
and  gazing  in  the  brook.  Then  looking  up  with  warmth, 
"  And,  cousin,  you  never  must  think  so.  I  am  ardent,  and 
I  express  myself  freely  ;  but  I  never  meant  —  I  am  sure  I 
never  should  mean —  anything  more  than  a  sister  might  say." 

"  And  are  you  sure  you  never  could,  if  all  my  happiness 
depended  on  it,  Mary  ?  " 

She  turned  and  looked  up  in  his  face,  and  saw  a  look 
that  brought  conviction.  She  rose  to  go  on,  and  her  hand 
was  taken  and  drawn  into  the  arm  of  her  cousin,  and  that 
was  the  end  of  the  first  and  the  last  difficulty  that  ever  arose 
between  them. 


MRS.    A.    AND  MRS.   B. 

OR,  WHAT  SHE   THINKS   ABOUT  IT 

MRS.  A.  and  Mrs.  B.  were  next-door  neighbors  and  in 
timate  friends  —  that  is  to  say,  they  took  tea  with  each 
other  very  often,  and,  in  confidential  strains,  discoursed  of 
stockings  and  pocket-handkerchiefs,  of  puddings  and  car 
pets,  of  cookery  and  domestic  economy,  through  all  its 
branches. 

"  I  think,  on  the  whole,"  said  Mrs.  A.,  with  an  air  of 
profound  reflection,  "  that  gingerbread  is  the  cheapest  and 
healthiest  cake  one  can  make.  I  make  a  good  deal  of  it, 
and  let  my  children  have  as  much  as  they  want  of  it." 

"  I  used  to  do  so,"  said  Mrs.  B.,  "  but  I  have  n't  had 
any  made  these  two  months." 

"  Ah  !     Why  not  ?  "  said  Mrs.  A. 

"  Why,  it  is  some  trouble  ;  and  then,  though  it  is  cheap, 
it  is  cheaper  not  to  have  any  ;  and  on  the  whole,  the  children 
are  quite  as  well  contented  without  it,  and  so  we  are  fallen 
into  the  way  of  not  having  any." 

"  But  one  must  keep  some  kind  of  cake  in  the  house," 
said  Mrs.  A. 

"  So  I  have  always  heard,  and  thought,  and  practiced," 
said  Mrs.  B.  ;  "  but  really  of  late  I  have  questioned  the 
need  of  it." 

The  conversation  gradually  digressed  from  this  point  into 
various  intricate  speculations  on  domestic  economy,  and  at 
last  each  lady  went  home  to  put  her  children  to  bed. 

A  fortnight  after,  the  two  ladies  were  again  in  conclave 


MRS.   A.    AND   MRS.    B.  109 

at  Mrs.  B.'s  tea-table,  which  was  graced  by  some  unusually 
nice  gingerbread. 

"  I  thought  you  had  given  up  making  gingerbread,"  said 
Mrs.  A. ;  "  you  told  me  so  a  fortnight  ago  at  my  house." 

"  So  I  had,"  said  Mrs.  B.  ;  "but  since  that  conversation 
I  have  been  making  it  again." 

"  Why  so  ?  " 

"  Oh,  I  thought  that  since  you  thought  it  economical 
enough,  certainly  I  might ;  and  that  if  you  thought  it 
necessary  to  keep  some  sort  of  cake  in  the  closet,  perhaps 
it  was  best  I  should." 

Mrs.  A.  laughed. 

"  Well,  now,"  said  she,  "  I  have  not  made  any  ginger 
bread,  or  cake  of  any  kind,  since  that  same  conversation." 

"  Indeed?" 

"  No.  I  said  to  myself,  if  Mrs.  B.  thinks  it  will  do  to 
go  without  cake  in  the  house,  I  suppose  I  might,  as  she 
says  it  is  some  additional  expense  and  trouble  ;  and  so  I 
gave  it  up." 

Both  ladies  laughed,  and  you  laugh,  too,  my  dear  lady 
reader ;  but  have  you  never  done  the  same  thing  ?  Have 
you  never  altered  your  dress,  or  your  arrangements,  or  your 
housekeeping  because  somebody  else  was  of  a  different  way 
of  thinking  or  managing  —  and  may  not  that  very  somebody 
at  the  same  time  have  been  moved  to  make  some  change 
through  a  similar  observation  on  you  ? 

A  large  party  is  to  be  given  by  the  young  lads  of  N.  to 
the  young  lassies  of  the  same  place  ;  they  are  to  drive  out 
together  to  a  picnic  in  the  woods,  and  to  come  home  by 
moonlight ;  the  weather  is  damp  and  uncertain,  the  ground 
chill,  and  young  people,  as  in  all  ages  before  the  flood  and 
since,  not  famous  for  the  grace  of  prudence  ;  for  all  which 
reasons,  almost  every  mamma  hesitates  about  her  daughters' 
going  —  thinks  it  a  very  great  pity  the  thing  has  been 
started. 


110  MRS.   A.    AND   MRS.    B. 

"  I  really  don't  like  this  thing/'  says  Mrs.  G. ;  "it's  not 
a  kind  of  thing  that  I  approve  of,  and  if  Mrs.  X.  was  not 
going  to  let  her  daughters  go,  I  should  set  myself  against 
it.  How  Mrs.  X.,  who  is  so  very  nice  in  her  notions,  can 
sanction  such  a  thing,  I  cannot  see.  I  am  really  surprised 
at  Mrs.  X." 

All  this  time,  poor  unconscious  Mrs.  X.  is  in  a  similar 
tribulation. 

"  This  is  a  very  disagreeable  affair  to  me,"  she  says.  "  I 
really  have  almost  a  mind  to  say  that  my  girls  shall  not  go ; 
but  Mrs.  G.'s  daughters  are  going,  and  Mrs.  C.'s  and  Mrs. 
W.'s,  and  of  course  it  would  be  idle  for  me  to  oppose  it.  I 
should  not  like  to  cast  any  reflections  on  a  course  sanctioned 
by  ladies  of  such  prudence  and  discretion." 

In  the  same  manner  Mrs.  A.,  B.,  and  C.,  and  the  good 
matrons  through  the  alphabet  generally,  with  doleful  lamen 
tations,  each  one  consents  to  the  thing  that  she  allows  not, 
and  the  affair  proceeds  swimmingly,  to  the  great  satisfaction 
of  the  juveniles.  Now  and  then,  it  is  true,  some  individual 
sort  of  body,  who  might  be  designated  by  the  angular  and 
decided  letters  K  or  L,  says  to  her  son  or  daughter :  "  No. 
I  don't  approve  of  the  thing,"  and  is  deaf  to  the  oft-urged, 
"Mrs.  A.,  B.,  andC.  do  so." 

"  I  have  nothing  to  do  with  Mrs.  A.,  B.,  and  C.'s  arrange 
ments,"  says  this  impracticable  Mrs.  K.  or  L.  "  I  only 
know  what  is  best  for  my  children,  and  they  shall  not  go." 

Again,  Mrs.  G.  is  going  to  give  a  party ;  and,  now,  shall 
she  give  wine,  or  not  ?  Mrs.  G.  has  heard  an  abundance  of 
temperance  speeches  and  appeals,  heard  the  duties  of  ladies 
in  the  matter  of  sanctioning  temperance  movements  aptly 
set  forth,  but  "  none  of  these  things  move  her  half  so  much 
as  another  consideration."  She  has  heard  that  Mrs.  D.  in 
troduced  wine  into  her  last  soiree.  Mrs.  D.'s  husband  has 
been  a  leading  orator  of  the  temperance  society,  and  Mrs.  D. 
is  no  less  a  leading  member  in  the  circles  of  fashion.  Now, 


MRS.   A.    AND   MRS.   B.  Ill 

Mrs.  G.'s  soul  is  in  great  perplexity.  If  she  only  could  be 
sure  that  the  report  about  Mrs.  D.  is  authentic,  why,  then, 
of  course  the  thing  is  settled ;  regret  it  as  much  as  she  may, 
she  cannot  get  through  her  party  without  the  wine ;  and  so 
at  last  come  the  party  and  the  wine.  Mrs.  D.,  who  was 
incorrectly  stated  to  have  had  the  article  at  her  last  soire'e, 
has  it  at  her  next  one,  and  quotes  discreet  Mrs.  G.  as  her 
precedent.  Mrs.  P.  is  greatly  scandalized  at  this,  because 
Mrs.  G.  is  a  member  of  the  church,  and  Mr.  D.  a  leading 
temperance  orator ;  but  since  they  will  do  it,  it  is  not  for 
her  to  be  nice,  and  so  she  follows  the  fashion. 

Mrs.  N.  comes  home  from  church  on  Sunday,  rolling  up 
her  eyes  with  various  appearances  of  horror  and  surprise. 

"  Well !  I  am  going  to  give  up  trying  to  restrain  my  girls 
from  dressing  extravagantly  ;  it  7s  of  no  use  trying  !  —  no 
use  in  the  world." 

"  Why,  mother,  what  's  the  matter  ?  "  exclaimed  the  girls 
aforesaid,  delighted  to  hear  such  encouraging  declarations. 

"  Why,  did  n't  you  see  Mrs.  K.'s  daughters  sitting  in 
the  pew  before  us  with  feathers  in  their  bonnets  ?  If  Mrs. 
K.  is  coming  out  in  this  way,  I  shall  give  up.  I  sha'n't 
try  any  longer.  I  am  going  to  get  just  what  I  want,  and 
dress  as  much  as  I've  a  mind  to.  Girls,  you  may  get 
those  visites  that  you  were  looking  at  at  Mr.  B.'s  store  last 
week  ! " 

The  next  Sunday,  Mrs.  K.'s  girls  in  turn  begin  :  — 

"  There,  mamma,  you  are  always  lecturing  us  about  econ 
omy,  and  all  that,  and  wanting  us  to  wear  our  old  mantillas 
another  winter,  and  there  are  Mrs.  N.'s  girls  shining  out  in 
new  visites." 

Mamma  looks  sensible  and  judicious,  and  tells  the  girls 
they  ought  not  to  see  what  people  are  wearing  in  church  on 
Sundays ;  but  it  becomes  evident,  before  the  week  is  through, 
that  she  has  not  forgotten  the  observation.  She  is  anxiously 
pricing  visites,  and  looking  thoughtful  as  one  on  the  eve  of 


112  MRS.   A.   AND  MRS.   B. 

an  important  determination  ;  and  the  next  Sunday  the  girls 
appear  in  full  splendor,  with  new  visites,  to  the  increasing 
horror  of  Mrs.  N. 

So  goes  the  shuttlecock  back  and  forward,  kept  up  on 
both  sides  by  most  judicious  hands. 

In  like  manner,  at  a  modern  party,  a  circle  of  matrons 
sit  in  edifying  conclave,  and  lament  the  degeneracy  of  the 
age. 

"  These  parties  that  begin  at  nine  o'clock  and  end  at  two 
or  three  in  the  morning  are  shameful  things,"  says  fat  Mrs. 
Q.,  complacently  fanning  herself.  (1ST.  B.  Mrs.  Q.  is  plot 
ting  to  have  one  the  very  next  week,  and  has  come  just  to 
see  the  fashions.) 

"  Oh,  dreadful,  dreadful !  "  exclaim,  in  one  chorus,  meek 
Mrs.  M.,  and  tall  Mrs.  F.,  and  stiff  Mrs.  J. 

"  They  are  very  unhealthy,"  says  Mrs.  F. 

"  They  disturb  all  family  order,"  says  Mrs.  J. 

"  They  make  one  so  sleepy  the  next  day,"  says  Mrs.  M. 

"They  are  very  laborious  to  get  up,  and  entirely  use 
less,"  says  Mrs.  Q. ;  at  the  same  time  counting  across  the 
room  the  people  that  she  shall  invite  next  week. 

Mrs.  M.  and  Mrs.  F.  diverge  into  a  most  edifying  strain 
of  moral  reflection  on  the  improvement  of  time,  the  neces 
sity  of  sobriety  and  moderation,  the  evils  of  conformity  to 
the  world,  till  one  is  tempted  to  feel  that  the  tract  society 
ought  to  have  their  remarks  for  general  circulation,  were  one 
not  damped  by  the  certain  knowledge  that  before  the  winter 
is  out  each  of  these  ladies  will  give  exactly  such  another 
party.  And,  now  are  all  these  respectable  ladies  hypocritical 
or  insincere  ?  By  no  means  —  they  believe  every  word 
they  say;  but  a  sort  of  necessity  is  laid  upon  them  —  a 
spell;  and  before  the  breath  of  the  multitude  their  indi 
vidual  resolution  melts  away  as  the  frosty  tracery  melts 
from  the  window-panes  of  a  crowded  room.  A  great  many 
do  this  habitually,  resignedly,  as  a  matter  of  course.  Ask 


MRS.   A.   AND   MRS.    B.  113 

them  what  they  think  to  be  right  and  proper,  and  they  will 
tell  you  sensibly,  coherently,  and  quite  to  the  point  in  one 
direction  ;  ask  them  what  they  are  going  to  do.  Ah  !  that 
is  quite  another  matter.  They  are  going  to  do  what  is 
generally  done  —  what  Mrs.  A.,  B.,  and  C.  do.  They  have 
long  since  made  over  their  conscience  to  the  keeping  of  the 
public,  —  that  is  to  say,  of  good  society,  —  and  are  thus 
rid  of  a  troublesome  burden  of  responsibility.  Again,  there 
are  others  who  mean  in  general  to  have  an  opinion  and  will 
of  their  own ;  but,  imperceptibly,  as  one  and  another  take 
a  course  opposed  to  their  own  sense  of  right  and  propriety, 
their  resolution  quietly  melts  and  melts,  till  every  individual 
outline  of  it  is  gone,  and  they  do  as  others  do. 

Yet  is  this  influence  of  one  human  being  over  another  — 
in  some  sense,  God-appointed  —  a  necessary  result  of  the 
human  constitution.  There  is  scarcely  a  human  being  that 
is  not  varied  and  swerved  by  it,  as  the  trembling  needle 
is  swerved  by  the  approaching  magnet.  Oppose  conflict 
with  it,  as  one  may  at  a  distance,  yet  when  it  breathes  on  us 
through  the  breath,  and  shines  on  us  through  the  eye  of  an 
associate,  it  possesses  an  invisible  magnetic  power.  He  who 
is  not  at  all  conscious  of  such  impressibility  can  scarce  be 
amiable  or  human.  Nevertheless,  one  of  the  most  impor 
tant  habits  for  the  acquisition  of  a  generous  and  noble  char 
acter,  is  to  learn  to  act  individually,  unswerved  by  the  feel 
ings  and  opinions  of  others.  It  may  help  us  to  do  this,  to 
reflect  that  the  very  person  whose  opinion  we  fear  may  be 
in  equal  dread  of  ours,  and  that  the  person  to  whom  we  are 
looking  for  a  precedent  may,  at  that  very  time,  be  looking 
to  us. 

In  short,  Mrs.  A.,  if  you  think  that  you  could  spend  your 
money  more  like  a  Christian  than  in  laying  it  out  on  a  fash 
ionable  party,  go  forward  and  do  it,  and  twenty  others, 
whose  supposed  opinion  you  fear,  will  be  glad  of  your  ex 
ample  for  a  precedent.  And,  Mrs.  B.,  if  you  do  think  it 


114  MRS.   A.   AND  MRS.   B. 

would  be  better  for  your  children  to  observe  early  hours, 
and  form  simple  habits,  than  to  dress  and  dance,  and  give 
and  go  to  juvenile  balls,  carry  out  your  opinion  in  prac 
tice,  and  many  an  anxious  mother,  who  is  of  the  same  opin 
ion,  will  quote  your  example  as  her  shield  and  defense. 

And  for  you,  young  ladies,  let  us  pray  you  to  reflect  — 
individuality  of  character,  maintained  with  womanly  sweet 
ness,  is  an  irresistible  grace  and  adornment.  Have  some 
principles  of  taste  for  yourself,  and  do  not  adopt  every  fash 
ion  of  dress  that  is  in  vogue,  whether  it  suits  you  or  not, 
—  whether  it  is  becoming  or  not,  —  but,  without  a  startling 
variation  from  general  form,  let  your  dress  show  something 
of  your  own  taste  and  opinions.  Have  some  principles  of 
right  and  wrong  for  yourself,  and  do  not  do  everything  that 
every  one  else  does,  because  every  one  else  does  it. 

Nothing  is  more  tedious  than  a  circle  of  young  ladies  who 
have  got  by  rote  a  certain  set  of  phrases  and  opinions  —  all 
admiring  in  the  same  terms  the  same  things,  and  detesting 
in  like  terms  certain  others  —  with  anxious  solicitude  each 
dressing,  thinking,  and  acting,  one  as  much  like  another  as 
is  possible.  A  genuine  original  opinion,  even  though  it 
were  so  heretical  as  to  assert  that  Jenny  Lind  is  a  little 
lower  than  the  angels,  or  that  Shakespeare  is  rather  dull 
reading,  would  be  better  than  such  a  universal  Dead  Sea  of 
acquiescence. 

These  remarks  have  borne  reference  to  the  female  sex 
principally,  because  they  are  the  dependent,  the  acquiescent 
sex  —  from  nature,  and  habit,  and  position,  most  exposed  to 
be  swayed  by  opinion  —  and  yet,  too,  in  a  certain  very  wide 
department  they  are  the  lawgivers  and  custom-makers  of 
society.  If,  amid  the  multiplied  schools,  whose  advertise 
ments  now  throng  our  papers,  purporting  to  teach  girls 
everything,  both  ancient  and  modern,  high  and  low,  from 
playing  on  the  harp  and  working  pincushions,  up  to  civil 
engineering,  surveying,  and  navigation,  there  were  any 


MRS.    A.   AND   MRS.   B.  115 

which  could  teach  them  to  be  women  —  to  have  thoughts, 
opinions,  and  modes  of  action  of  their  own  —  such  a  school 
would  be  worth  having.  If  one  half  of  the  good  purposes 
which  are  in  the  hearts  of  the  ladies  of  our  nation  were  only 
acted  out  without  fear  of  anybody's  opinion,  we  should  cer 
tainly  be  a  step  nearer  the  millennium. 


WHICH   IS   THE   LIBERAL   MAN 

IT  was  a  beaming  and  beautiful  summer  morning,  and 
the  little  town  of  V.  was  alive  with  all  the  hurry  and 
motion  of  a  college  commencement.  Rows  of  carriages 
lined  the  rural  streets,  and  groups  of  well-dressed  auditors 
were  thronging  to  the  hall  of  exhibition.  All  was  gayety 
and  animation.  And  among  them  all  what  heart  beat 
higher  with  hope  and  gratified  ambition  than  that  of  James 
Stanton  ?  Young,  buoyant,  prepossessing  in  person  and 
manners,  he  was  this  day,  in  the  presence  of  all  the  world, 
to  carry  off  the  highest  palm  of  scholarship  in  his  institution, 
and  to  receive,  on  the  threshold  of  the  great  world,  the  ut 
most  that  youthful  ambition  can  ask  before  it  enters  the 
arena  of  actual  life.  Did  not  his  pulse  flutter,  and  his 
heart  beat  thick,  when  he  heard  himself  announced  in  the 
crowded  house  as  the  valedictorian  of  the  day  ?  when  he 
saw  aged  men,  and  fair,  youthful  faces,  ruddy  childhood, 
and  sober,  calculating  manhood  alike  bending  in  hushed  and 
eager  curiosity,  to  listen  to  his  words  ?  Nay,  did  not  his 
heart  rise  in  his  throat  as  he  caught  the  gleam  of  his  father's 
eye,  while,  bending  forward  on  his  staff",  with  white,  reverend 
locks  falling  about  his  face,  he  listened  to  the  voice  of  his 
pride  —  his  firstborn  ?  And  did  he  not  see  the  glistening 
tears  in  his  mother's  eye,  as  with  rapt  ear  she  hung  upon 
his  every  word  ?  Ah,  the  young  man's  first  triumph ! 
When,  full  of  confidence  and  hope,  he  enters  the  field  of 
life,  all  his  white  glistening  as  yet  unsoiled  by  the  dust  of 
the  combat,  the  unproved  world  turning  towards  him  with 
flatteries  and  promises  in  both  hands,  what  other  triumph 


WHICH  IS   THE  LIBERAL  MAN  117 

does  life  give  so  fresh,  so  full,  so  replete  with  hope  and  joy  ? 
So  felt  James  Stanton  this  day,  when  he  heard  his  father 
congratulated  on  having  a  son  of  such  promise  ;  when  old 
men,  revered  for  talents  and  worth,  shook  hands  with  him, 
and  bade  him  warmly  Godspeed  in  the  course  of  life ;  when 
bright  eyes  cast  glances  of  favor,  and  from  among  the  fairest 
were  overheard  whispers  of  admiration. 

"  Your  son  is  designed  for  the  bar,  I  trust,"  said  the 
venerable  Judge  L.  to  the  father  of  James,  at  the  com 
mencement  dinner.  "  I  have  seldom  seen  a  turn  of  mind 
better  fitted  for  success  in  the  legal  profession.  And  then 
his  voice  !  his  manner !  let  him  go  to  the  bar,  sir,  and  I  pro 
phesy  that  he  will  yet  outdo  us  all." 

And  this  was  said  in  James's  hearing,  and  by  one  whose 
commendation  was  not  often  so  warmly  called  forth.  It 
was  not  in  any  young  heart  not  to  beat  quicker  at  such 
prospects.  Honor,  station,  wealth,  political  ambition,  all 
seemed  to  offer  themselves  to  his  grasp  ;  but  long  ere  this, 
in  the  solitude  of  retirement,  in  the  stillness  of  prayer  and 
self-examination,  the  young  graduate  had  vowed  himself  to 
a  different  destiny ;  and  if  we  may  listen  to  a  conversation, 
a  few  evenings  after  commencement,  with  a  classmate^  we 
shall  learn  more  of  the  secret  workings  of  his  mind. 

"  And  so,  Stanton,"  said  George  Lennox  to  him,  as  they 
sat  by  their  evening  fireside,  "  you  have  not  yet  decided 
whether  to  accept  Judge  L.'s  offer  or  not." 

"  I  have  decided  that  matter  long  ago,"  said  James. 

"  So,  then,  you  choose  the  ministry." 

"  Yes." 

"  Well,  for  my  part,"*  replied  George  Lennox,  "  I  choose 
the  law.  There  must  be  Christians,  you  know,  in  every  vo 
cation  ;  the  law  seems  to  suit  my  turn  of  mind.  I  trust  it 
will  be  my  effort  to  live  as  becomes  a  Christian,  whatever 
be  my  calling." 

"  I  trust  so,"  replied  James. 


118  WHICH   IS   THE   LIBERAL   MAN 

"  But  really,  Stanton,"  added  the  other,  after  some 
thought,  "  it  seems  a  pity  to  cast  away  such  prospects  as 
open  before  you.  You  know  your  tuition  is  offered  gratis  ; 
and  then  the  patronage  of  Judge  L.,  and  such  influences  as 
he  can  command  to  secure  your  success  —  pray,  do  not  these 
things  seem  to  you  like  a  providential  indication  that  the 
law  is  to  be  your  profession  ?  Besides,  here  in  these  New 
England  States,  the  ministry  is  overflowed  already  —  min 
isters  enough,  and  too  many,  if  one  may  judge  by  the  num 
ber  of  applicants  for  every  unoccupied  place." 

"  Nay/'  replied  James,  "  my  place  is  not  here.  I  know, 
if  all  accounts  are  true,  that  my  profession  is  not  overflowed 
in  our  Western  States,  and  there  I  mean  to  go." 

"  And  is  it  possible  that  you  can  contemplate  such  an  en 
tire  sacrifice  of  your  talents,  your  manners,  your  literary  and 
scientific  tastes,  your  capabilities  for  refined  society,  as  to 
bury  yourself  in  a  log  cabin  in  one  of  our  new  States  ?  You 
will  never  be  appreciated  there  ;  your  privations  and  sacri 
fices  will  be  entirely  disregarded,  and  you  placed  on  a  level 
with  the  coarsest  and  most  uneducated  sectaries.  I  really 
do  not  think  you  are  called  to  this." 

"  Who,  then,  is  called  ?  "  replied  James. 

"  Why,  men  with  much  less  of  all  these  good  things  — 
men  with  real  coarse,  substantial,  backwoods  furniture  in 
their  minds,  who  will  not  appreciate,  and  of  course  not  feel, 
the  want  of  all  the  refinements  and  comforts  which  you 
must  sacrifice." 

"  And  are  there  enough  such  men  ready  to  meet  the 
emergencies  in  our  western  world,  so  that  no  others  need 
be  called  upon  ?  "  replied  James.  "  Men  of  the  class  you 
speak  of  may  do  better  than  I ;  but,  if  after  all  their  efforts 
I  still  am  needed,  and  can  work  well,  ought  I  not  to  go  ? 
Must  those  only  be  drafted  for  religious  enterprises  to  whom 
they  involve  no  sacrifice  ?  " 

"  Well,  for  my  part,"  replied  the  other,  "  I  trust  I  am 


WHICH    IS   THE   LIBERAL  MAN  119 

willing  to  do  anything  that  is  my  duty  ;  yet  I  never  could 
feel  it  to  be  my  duty  to  bury  myself  in  a  new  State,  among 
stumps  and  log  cabins.  My  mind  would  rust  itself  out ; 
and,  missing  the  stimulus  of  such  society  as  I  have  been 
accustomed  to,  I  should  run  down  completely,  and  be  use 
less  in  body  and  in  mind." 

"  If  you  feel  so,  it  would  be  so/7  replied  James.  "  If 
the  work  there  to  be  done  would  not  be  stimulus  and  ex 
citement  enough  to  compensate  for  the  absence  of  all  other 
stimulus,  —  if  the  business  of  the  ministry,  the  saving  of 
human  souls,  is  not  the  one  all-absorbing  purpose,  and  de 
sire,  and  impulse  of  the  whole  being,  —  then  woe  to  the 
man  who  goes  to  preach  the  gospel  where  there  is  nothing 
but  human  souls  to  be  gained  by  it." 

"  Well,  Stanton,"  replied  the  other,  after  a  pause  of  some 
seriousness,  "  I  cannot  say  that  I  have  attained  to  this  yet. 
I  don't  know  but  I  might  be  brought  to  it ;  but  at  present 
I  must  confess  it  is  not  so.  We  ought  not  to  rush  into  a 
state  and  employment  which  we  have  not  the  moral  forti 
tude  to  sustain  well.  In  short,  for  myself,  I  may  make  a 
respectable,  and,  I  trust,  not  useless  man  in  the  law,  when 
I  could  do  nothing  in  the  circumstances  which  you  choose. 
However,  I  respect  your  feelings,  and  heartily  wish  that  I 
could  share  them  myself." 

A  few  days  after  this  conversation  the  young  friends 
parted  for  their  several  destinations  —  the  one  to  a  law 
school,  the  other  to  a  theological  seminary. 

It  was  many  years  after  this  that  a  middle-aged  man, 
of  somewhat  threadbare  appearance  and  restricted  traveling 
conveniences,  was  seen  carefully  tying  his  horse  at  the 

outer  inclosure  of  an  elegant  mansion  in  the  town  of , 

in  one  of  our  Western  States ;  which  being  done,  he  eyed 
the  house  rather  inquisitively,  as  people  sometimes  do  when 
they  are  doubtful  as  to  the  question  of  entering  or  not 


120  WHICH   IS   THE   LIBERAL   MAN 

entering.  The  house  belonged  to  George  Lennox,  Esq.,  a 
lawyer  reputed  to  be  doing  a  more  extensive  business  than 
any  other  in  the  State,  and  the  threadbare  gentleman  who 
plies  the  knocker  at  the  front  door  is  the  Reverend  Mr. 
Stanton,  a  name  widely  spread  in  the  ecclesiastical  circles  of 
the  land.  The  door  opens,  and  the  old  college  acquaintances 
meet  with  a  cordial  grasp  of  the  hand,  and  Mr.  Stanton  soon 
finds  himself  pressed  to  the  most  comfortable  accommodations 
in  the  warm  parlor  of  his  friend ;  and  even  the  slight  un 
easiness  which  the  wisest  are  not  always  exempt  from,  when 
conscious  of  a  little  shabbiness  in  exterior,  was  entirely  dis 
sipated  by  the  evident  cordiality  of  his  reception.  Since  the 
conversation  we  have  alluded  to,  the  two  friends  pursued 
their  separate  courses  with  but  few  opportunities  of  per 
sonal  intercourse.  In  the  true  zeal  of  the  missionary  James 
Stanton  had  thrown  himself  into  the  field,  where  it  seemed 
hardest  and  darkest,  and  where  labor  seemed  most  needed. 
In  neighborhoods  without  churches,  without  schoolhouses, 
without  settled  roads,  among  a  population  of  disorganized 
and  heterogeneous  material,  he  had  exhorted  from  house 
to  house,  labored  individually  with  one  after  another,  till 
he  had,  in  place  after  place,  brought  together  the  elements 
of  a  Christian  Church.  Far  from  all  ordinances,  means 
of  grace,  or  Christian  brotherhood,  or  cooperation,  he  had 
seemed  to  himself  to  be  merely  the  lonely,  solitary  "  voice 
of  one  crying  in  the  wilderness,"  as  unassisted,  and,  to  hu 
man  view,  as  powerless.  With  poverty,  and  cold,  and  physi 
cal  fatigue  he  had  daily  been  familiar  ;  and  where  no  vehicle 
could  penetrate  the  miry  depths  of  the  forest,  where  it  was 
impracticable  even  to  guide  a  horse,  he  had  walked  miles 
and  miles,  through  mud  and  rain,  to  preach.  With  a  wife 
in  delicate  health,  and  a  young  and  growing  family,  he  had 
more  than  once  seen  the  year  when  fifty  dollars  was  the 
whole  amount  of  money  that  had  passed  through  his  hands ; 
and  the  whole  of  the  rest  of  his  support  had  come  in  dis- 


WHICH  IS   THE   LIBERAL  MAN  121 

connected  contributions  from  one  and  another  of  his  people. 
He  had  lived  without  books,  without  newspapers,  except  as 
he  had  found  them  by  chance  snatches  here  and  there,1  and 
felt,  as  one  so  circumstanced  only  can  feel,  the  difficulty  of 
maintaining  intellectual  vigor  and  energy  in  default  of  all 
those  stimulants  to  which  cultivated  minds  in  more  favor 
able  circumstances  are  so  much  indebted.  At  the  time  that 
he  is  now  introduced  to  the  reader,  he  had  been  recently 
made  pastor  in  one  of  the  most  important  settlements  in 
the  State,  and  among  those  who,  so  far  as  worldly  circum 
stances  were  concerned,  were  able  to  afford  him  a  competent 
support.  But  among  communities  like  those  at  the  West, 
settled  for  expressly  money-making  purposes,  and  by  those 
who  have  for  years  been  taught  the  lesson  to  save,  and  have 
scarcely  begun  to  feel  the  duty  to  give,  a  minister,  however 
laborious,  however  eloquent  and  successful,  may  often  feel 
the  most  serious  embarrassments  of  poverty.  Too  often  is 
his  salary  regarded  as  a  charity  which  may  be  given  or 
retrenched  to  suit  every  emergency  of  the  times,  and  his 
family  expenditures  watched  with  a  jealous  and  censorious 
eye. 

On  the  other  hand,  George  Lennox,  the  lawyer,  had  by 
his  talents  and  efficiency  placed  himself  at  the  head  of  his 
profession,  and  was  realizing  an  income  which  brought  all 
the  comforts  and  elegances  of  life  within  his  reach.  He 
was  a  member  of  the  Christian  church  in  the  place  where 
he  lived,  irreproachable  in  life  and  conduct.  From  nat 
ural  generosity  of  disposition,  seconded  by  principle,  he  was 
a  liberal  contributor  to  all  religious  and  benevolent  enter 
prises,  and  was  often  quoted  and  referred  to  as  an  example 
in  good  works.  Surrounded  by  an  affectionate  and  growing 
family,  with  ample  means  for  providing  in  the  best  manner 
both  for  their  physical  and  mental  development,  he  justly 

1  These  particulars  the  writer  heard  stated  personally  as  a  part  of  the 
experience  of  one  of  the  most  devoted  ministers  of  Ohio. 


122  WHICH   IS   THE   LIBERAL   MAN 

regarded  himself  as  a  happy  man,  and  was  well  satisfied 
with  the  world  he  lived  in. 

Now,  there  is  nothing  more  trying  to  the  Christianity 
or  the  philosophy  which  teaches  the  vanity  of  riches  than 
a  few  hours'  domestication  in  a  family  where  wealth  is  em 
ployed,  not  for  purposes  of  ostentation,  but  for  the  per 
fecting  of  home  comfort  and  the  gratification  of  refined  in 
tellectual  tastes  :  and  as  Mr.  Stanton  leaned  back,  slippered 
and  gowned,  in  one  of  the  easiest  of  chairs,  and  began  to 
look  over  periodicals  and  valuable  new  books  from  which 
he  had  long  been  excluded,  he  might  be  forgiven  for  giving 
a  half  sigh  to  the  reflection  that  he  could  never  be  a  rich 
man.  "  Have  you  read  this  review  ?  "  said  his  compan 
ion,  handing  him  one  of  the  leading  periodicals  of  the  day 
across  the  table. 

"  I  seldom  see  reviews,'7  said  Mr.  Stanton,  taking  it. 

"  You  lose  a  great  deal,"  replied  the  other,  "  if  you  have 
not  seen  those  by  this  author  —  altogether  the  ablest  series 
of  literary  efforts  in  our  time.  You  clerical  gentlemen 
ought  not  to  sacrifice  your  literary  tastes  entirely  to  your 
professional  cares.  A  moderate  attention  to  current  litera 
ture  liberalizes  the  mind,  and  gives  influence  that  you  could 
not  otherwise  acquire." 

"  Literary  taste  is  an  expensive  thing  to  a  minister,"  said 
Mr.  Stanton,  smiling  ;  "  for  the  mind,  as  well  as  the  body, 
we  must  forego  all  luxuries,  and  confine  ourselves  simply 
to  necessaries." 

"  I  would  always  indulge  myself  with  books  and  periodi 
cals,  even  if  I  had  to  scrimp  elsewhere,"  said  Mr.  Lennox ; 
and  he  spoke  of  scrimping  with  all  the  serious  good  faith 
with  which  people  of  two  or  three  thousand  a  year  usually 
speak  of  these  matters. 

Mr.  Stanton  smiled,  and  waived  the  subject,  wondering 
mentally  where  his  friend  would  find  an  elsewhere  to 
scrimp,  if  he  had  the  management  of  his  concerns.  The 


WHICH   IS   THE   LIBERAL   MAN  123 

conversation  gradually  flowed  back  to  college  days  and 
scenes,  and  the  friends  amused  themselves  with  tracing  the 
history  of  their  various  classmates. 

"  And  so  Alsop  is  in  the  Senate/'  said  Mr.  Stanton. 
"  Strange  !  We  did  not  at  all  expect  it  of  him.  But  do 
you  know  anything  of  George  Bush  ?  " 

"  Oh,  yes,"  replied  the  other  ;  "  he  went  into  mercantile 
life,  and  the  last  I  heard  he  had  turned  a  speculation  worth 
thirty  thousand  —  a  shrewd  fellow.  I  always  knew  he 
would  make  his  way  in  the  world." 

"  But  what  has  become  of  Langdon  ?  " 

"  Oh,  he  is  doing  well ;  he  is  professor  of  languages  in 

College,  and  I  hear  he  has  lately  issued  a  Latin 

Grammar  that  promises  to  have  quite  a  run." 

"  And  Smithson  ?  " 

"  Smithson  has  an  office  at  Washington,  and  was  there 
living  in  great  style  the  last  time  I  saw  him." 

It  may  be  questioned  whether  the  minister  sank  to  sleep 
that  night,  amid  the  many  comfortable  provisions  of  his 
friend's  guest  chamber,  without  rebuking  in  his  heart  a  cer 
tain  rising  of  regret  that  he  had  turned  his  back  on  all  the 
honors,  and  distinctions,  and  comforts  which  lay  around  the 
path  of  others,  who  had  not,  in  the  opening  of  the  race,  half 
the  advantages  of  himself.  "  See,"  said  the  insidious  voice ; 
"what  have  you  gained  ?  See  your  early  friends  surrounded 
by  riches  and  comfort,  while  you  are  pinched  and  harassed 
by  poverty.  Have  they  not,  many  of  them,  as  good  a  hope 
of  heaven  as  you  have,  and  all  this  besides  ?  Could  you 
not  have  lived  easier,  and  been  a  good  man  after  all  ?  " 
The  reflection  was  only  silenced  by  remembering  that  the 
only  Being  who  ever  had  the  perfect  power  of  choosing  his 
worldly  condition,  chose,  of  his  own  accord,  a  poverty  deeper 
than  that  of  any  of  his  servants.  Had  Christ  consented  to 
be  rich,  what  check  could  there  have  been  to  the  desire  of 
it  among  his  followers  ?  But  he  chose  to  stoop  so  low  that 


124  WHICH   IS   THE   LIBERAL   MAN 

none  could  be  lower  ;  and  that  in  extremest  want  none  could 
ever  say,  "  I  am  poorer  than  was  my  Saviour  and  God." 

The  friends  at  parting  the  next  morning  shook  hands 
warmly,  and  promised  a  frequent  renewal  of  their  resumed 
intercourse.  Nor  was  the  bill  for  twenty  dollars,  which  the 
minister  found  in  his  hand,  at  all  an  unacceptable  addition 
to  the  pleasures  of  his  visit ;  and  though  the  November  wind 
whistled  keenly  through  a  dull,  comfortless  sky,  he  turned 
his  horse's  head  homeward  with  a  lightened  heart. 

"  Mother 's  sick,  and  I  'm  a-keeping  house !  "  said  a  little 
flaxen-headed  girl,  in  all  the  importance  of  seven  years,  as 
her  father  entered  the  dwelling. 

"  Your  mother  sick  !  what 's  the  matter  ?  "  inquired  Mr. 
Stanton. 

"  She  caught  cold  washing,  yesterday,  while  you  were 
gone  ;  "  and  when  the  minister  stood  by  the  bedside  of  his 
sick  wife,  saw  her  flushed  face,  and  felt  her  feverish  pulse, 
he  felt  seriously  alarmed.  She  had  scarcely  recovered  from 
a  dangerous  fever  when  he  left  home,  and  with  reason  he 
dreaded  a  relapse. 

"  My  dear,  why  have  you  done  so  ?  "  was  the  first  ex 
postulation  ;  "  why  did  you  not  send  for  old  Agnes  to  do 
your  washing,  as  I  told  you  ?  " 

"  I  felt  so  well,  I  thought  I  was  quite  able,"  was  the 
reply ;  "  and  you  know  it  will  take  all  the  money  we  have 
now  in  hand  to  get  the  children's  shoes  before  cold  weather 
comes,  and  nobody  knows  when  we  shall  have  any  more." 

"  Well,  Mary,  comfort  your  heart  as  to  that.  I  have  had 
a  present  to-day  of  twenty  dollars  —  that  will  last  us  some 
time.  God  always  provides  when  need  is  greatest."  And 
so,  after  administering  a  little  to  the  comfort  of  his  wife,  the 
minister  addressed  himself  to  the  business  of  cooking  some 
thing  for  dinner  for  himself  and  his  little  hungry  flock. 

"  There  is  no  bread  in  the  house,"  he  exclaimed,  after  a 
survey  of  the  ways  and  means  at  his  disposal. 


WHICH  IS   THE  LIBERAL   MAN  125 

"  I  must  try  and  sit  up  long  enough  to  make  some/7  said 
his  wife  faintly. 

"  You  must  try  to  he  quiet/'  replied  the  husband.  "  We 
can  do  very  well  on  potatoes.  But  yet/'  he  added,  "  I  think 
if  I  "bring  the  things  to  your  bedside,  and  you  show  me 
how  to  mix  them,  I  could  make  some  bread." 

A  burst  of  laughter  from  the  young  fry  chorused  his  pro 
posal  ;  nevertheless,  as  Mr.  Stanton  was  a  man  of  decided 
genius,  by  help  of  much  showing,  and  of  strong  arms  and 
good  will,  the  feat  was  at  length  accomplished  in  no  un 
workmanlike  manner ;  and  while  the  bread  was  put  down 
to  the  fire  to  rise,  and  the  potatoes  were  baking  in  the  oven, 
Mr.  Stanton  having  enjoined  silence  on  his  noisy  troop,  sat 
down,  pencil  in  hand,  by  his  wife's  bed,  to  prepare  a  ser 
mon.  We  would  that  those  ministers  who  feel  that  they 
cannot  compose  without  a  study,  and  that  the  airiest  and 
pleasantest  room  in  the  house,  where  the  floor  is  guarded 
by  the  thick  carpet,  the  light  carefully  relieved  by  curtains, 
where  papers  are  filed  and  arranged  neatly  in  conveniences 
purposely  adjusted,  with  books  of  reference  standing  invit 
ingly  around,  could  once  figure  to  themselves  the  process 
of  composing  a  sermon  in  circumstances  such  as  we  have 
painted.  Mr.  Stanton  had  written  his  text,  and  jotted  down 
something  of  an  introduction,  when  a  circumstance  occurred 
which  is  almost  inevitable  in  situations  where  a  person 
has  anything  else  to  attend  to  —  the  baby  woke.  The  little 
interloper  was  to  be  tied  into  a  chair,  while  the  flaxen- 
headed  young  housekeeper  was  now  installed  into  the  office 
of  waiter  in  ordinary  to  her  majesty,  and  by  shaking  a  news 
paper  before  her  face,  plying  a  rattle,  or  other  arts  known 
only  to  the  initiate,  to  prevent  her  from  indulging  in  any 
unpleasant  demonstrations,  while  Mr.  Stanton  proceeded 
with  his  train  of  thought. 

"  Papa,  papa !  the  teakettle  !  only  look !  "  cried  all  the 
younger  ones,  just  as  he  was  again  beginning  to  abstract  his 
mind. 


126  WHICH  IS   THE  LIBERAL  MAN 

Mr.  Stanton  rose,  and  adapting  part  of  his  sermon  paper 
to  the  handle  of  the  teakettle,  poured  the  boiling  water  on 
some  herb  drink  for  his  wife,  and  then  recommenced. 

"  I  sha'n't  have  much  of  a  sermon !  "  he  soliloquized,  as 
his  youngest  but  one,  with  the  ingenuity  common  to  chil 
dren  of  her  standing,  had  contrived  to  tip  herself  over  in 
her  chair,  and  cut  her  under  lip,  which  for  the  time  being 
threw  the  whole  settlement  into  commotion ;  and  this  con 
viction  was  strengthened  by  finding  that  it  was  now  time 
to  give  the  children  their  dinner. 

"  I  fear  Mrs.  Stanton  is  imprudent  in  exerting  herself,'7 
said  the  medical  man  to  the  husband,  as  he  examined  her 
symptoms. 

"  I  know  she  is,"  replied  her  husband,  "  but  I  cannot 
keep  her  from  it." 

"It  is  absolutely  indispensable  that  she  should  rest  and 
keep  her  mind  easy,"  said  the  doctor. 

"  Rest  and  keep  easy  "  —  how  easily  the  words  are  said ; 
yet  how  they  fall  on  the  ear  of  a  mother,  who  knows  that 
her  whole  flock  have  not  yet  a  garment  prepared  for  winter, 
that  hiring  assistance  is  out  of  the  question,  and  that  the 
work  must  all  be  done  by  herself  —  who  sees  that  while 
she  is  sick  her  husband  is  perplexed,  and  kept  from  his 
appropriate  duties,  and  her  children,  despite  his  well-meant 
efforts,  suffering  for  the  want  of  those  attentions  that  only 
a  mother  can  give.  Will  not  any  mother,  so  tried,  rise  from 
her  sick-bed  before  she  feels  able,  to  be  again  prostrated 
by  over-exertion,  until  the  vigor  of  the  constitution  year  by 
year  declines,  and  she  sinks  into  an  early  grave  ?  Yet  this 
is  the  true  history  of  many  a  wife  and  mother,  who,  in  con 
senting  to  share  the  privations  of  a  Western  minister,  has  as 
truly  sacrificed  her  life  as  did  ever  martyr  on  heathen  shores. 
The  graves  of  Harriet  Newell  and  Mrs.  Judson  are  hallowed 
as  the  shrines  of  saints,  and  their  memory  made  as  a  watch 
word  among  Christians  ;  yet  the  Western  valley  is  full  of 


WHICH  IS   THE   LIBERAL  MAN  127 

green  and  nameless  graves,  where  patient,  long-enduring 
wives  and  mothers  have  lain  down,  worn  out  by  the  priva 
tions  of  as  severe  a  missionary  field,  and  "  no  man  knoweth 
the  place  of  their  sepulchre." 

The  crisp  air  of  a  November  evening  was  enlivened  by 
the  fire  that  blazed  merrily  in  the  bar-room  of  the  tavern 
in  L.,  while  a  more  than  usual  number  crowded  about  the 
hearth,  owing  to  the  session  of  the  county  court  in  that 
place. 

"  Mr.  Lennox  is  a  pretty  smart  lawyer,"  began  an  old 
gentleman,  who  sat  in  one  of  the  corners,  in  the  half  inter 
rogative  tone  which  indicated  a  wish  to  start  conversation. 

"  Yes,  sir,  no  mistake  about  that,"  was  the  reply  ;  "  does 
the  largest  business  in  the  State  —  very  smart  man,  sir,  and 
honest  —  a  church  member  too,  and  one  of  the  tallest  kind 
of  Christians  they  say  —  gives  more  money  for  building 
meeting-houses,  and  all  sorts  of  religious  concerns,  than  any 
man  around." 

"  Well,  he  can  afford  it,"  said  a  man  with  a  thin,  care- 
taking  visage,  and  a  nervous,  anxious  twitch  of  the  hand, 
as  if  it  were  his  constant  effort  to  hold  on  to  something  — 
"  he  can  afford  it,  for  he  makes  money  hand  over  hand.  It 
is  not  everybody  can  afford  to  do  as  he  does." 

A  sly  look  of  intelligence  pervaded  the  company  ;  for  the 
speaker,  one  of  the  most  substantial  householders  in  the 
settlement,  was  always  taken  with  distressing  symptoms  of 
poverty  and  destitution  when  any  allusion  to  public  or  re 
ligious  charity  was  made. 

"  Mr.  C.  is  thinking  about  parish  matters,"  said  a  wicked 
wag  of  the  company  ;  "  you  see,  sir,  our  minister  urged  pretty 
hard  last  Sunday  to  have  his  salary  paid  up.  He  has  had 
sickness  in  his  family,  and  nothing  on  hand  for  winter  ex 
penses." 

"  I  don't  think  Mr.  Stanton  is  judicious  in  making  such 
public  statements,"  said  the  former  speaker  nervously ; 


128  WHICH  IS   THE  LIBERAL  MAN 

"  he  ought  to  consult  his  friends  privately,  and  not  bring 
temporalities  into  the  pulpit." 

"  That  is  to  say,  starve  decently,  and  make  no  fuss,"  re 
plied  the  other. 

"  Nonsense  !  Who  talks  of  starving,  when  provision  is  as 
plenty  as  blackberries  ?  I  tell  you  I  understand  this  matter, 
and  know  how  little  a  man  can  get  along  with.  I  've  tried 
it  myself.  When  I  first  set  out  in  life,  my  wife  and  I  had 
not  a  pair  of  andirons  or  a  shovel  and  tongs  for  two  or  three 
years,  and  we  never  thought  of  complaining.  The  times 
are  hard.  We  are  all  losing,  and  must  get  along  as  we  can ; 
and  Mr.  Stariton  must  bear  some  rubs  as  well  as  the  rest 
of  us." 

"  It  appears  to  me,  Mr.  C,,"  said  the  waggish  gentleman 
aforesaid,  "  that  if  you  'd  put  Mr.  Stanton  into  your  good 
brick  house,  and  give  him  your  furniture  and  income,  he 
would  be  well  satisfied  to  rub  along  as  you  do." 

"  Mr.  Stanton  is  n't  so  careful  in  his  expenses  as  he  might 
be,"  said  Mr.  C.  petulantly,  disregarding  the  idea  started 
by  his  neighbor  ;  "  he  buys  things  /  should  not  think  of 
buying.  Now,  I  was  in  his  house  the  other  day,  and  he 
had  just  given  three  dollars  for  a  single  book." 

"  Perhaps  it  was  a  book  he  needed  in  his  studies,"  sug 
gested  the  old  gentleman  who  began  the  conversation. 

"  What  's  the  use  of  book-larnin'  to  a  minister,  if  he  's 
got  the  real  spirit  in  him  ?  "  chimed  in  a  rough-looking  man 
in  the  farthest  corner ;  "  only  wish  you  could  have  heard 
Elder  North  give  it  off — there  was  a  real  genuine  preacher 
for  you,  could  n't  even  read  his  text  in  the  Bible  ;  yet,  sir, 
he  would  get  up  and  reel  it  off  as  smooth  and  fast  as  the 
best  of  them  that  come  out  of  the  colleges.  My  notion  is, 
it 's  the  spirit  that  ?s  the  thing,  after  all." 

Several  of  the  auditors  seemed  inclined  to  express  their 
approbation  of  this  doctrine,  though  some  remarked  that 
Mr.  Stanton  was  a  smarter  preacher  than  Elder  North,  for 


WHICH   IS   THE   LIBERAL   MAN  129 

all  his  book-larnin'.  Some  of  the  more  intelligent  of  the 
circle  here  exchanged  smiles,  but  declined  entering  the  lists 
in  favor  of  "  larnin'." 

"  Oh,  for  my  part,'7  resumed  Mr.  C.,  "I  am  for  having 
a  minister  study,  and  have  books  and  all  that,  if  he  can 
afford  it,  but  in  hard  times  like  these,  books  are  neither 
meat,  drink,  nor  fire  ;  and  I  know  I  can't  afford  them. 
Now,  I  'm  as  willing  to  contribute  my  part  to  the  minister's 
salary,  and  every  other  charity,  as  anybody,  when  I  can  get 
money  to  do  it,  but  in  these  times  I  can't  get  it." 

The  elderly  gentleman  here  interrupted  the  conversation 
by  saying  abruptly,  "  I  am  a  townsman  of  Mr.  Stanton's, 
and  it  is  my  opinion  that  he  has  impoverished  himself  by 
giving  in  religious  charity." 

"  Giving  in  charity  !  "  exclaimed  several  voices ;  "  where 
did  he  ever  get  anything  to  give  ?  " 

"  Yet  I  think  I  speak  within  bounds,"  said  the  old  gen 
tleman,  "  when  I  say  that  he  has  given  more  than  the 
amount  of  two  thousand  dollars  yearly  to  the  support  of  the 
gospel  in  this  State ;  and  I  think  I  can  show  it  to  be  so." 

The  eyes  of  the  auditors  were  now  enlarged  to  their  ut 
most  limits,  while  the  old  gentleman,  after  the  fashion  of 
shrewd  old  gentlemen  generally,  screwed  up  his  mouth  in 
a  very  dry  twist,  and  looked  in  the  fire  without  saying  a 
word. 

"  Come  now,  pray  tell  us  how  this  is,"  said  several  of 
the  company. 

"Well,  sir,"  said  the  old  man,  addressing  himself  to 
Mr.  C.,  "  you  are  a  man  of  business,  and  will  perhaps  un 
derstand  the  case  as  I  view  it.  You  were  speaking  this 
evening  of  Lawyer  Lennox.  He  and  your  minister  were 
both  from  my  native  place,  and  both  there  and  in  college 
your  minister  was  always  reckoned  the  smartest  of  the  two, 
and  went  ahead  in  everything  they  undertook.  Now,  you 
see  Mr.  Lennox,  out  of  his  talents  and  education,  makes  say 


130  WHICH   IS   THE   LIBERAL   MAN 

three  thousand  a  year.  Mr.  Stanton  had  more  talent,  and 
more  education,  and  might  have  made  even  more ;  but  by 
devoting  himself  to  the  work  of  the  ministry  in  your  State, 
he  gains,  we  will  say,  about  four  hundred  dollars.  Does  he 
not,  therefore,  in  fact,  give  all  the  difference  between  four 
hundred  and  three  thousand  to  the  cause  of  religion  in  this 
State  ?  If,  during  the  business  season  of  the  year,  you, 
Mr.  C.,  should  devote  your  whole  time  to  some  benevolent 
enterprise,  would  you  not  feel  that  you  had  virtually  given 
to  that  enterprise  all  the  money  you  would  otherwise  have 
made  ?  Instead,  therefore,  of  calling  it  a  charity  for  you 
to  subscribe  to  your  minister's  support,  you  ought  to  con 
sider  it  a  very  expensive  charity  for  him  to  devote  his  ex 
istence  in  preaching  to  you.  To  bring  the  gospel  to  your 
State,  he  has  given  up  a  reasonable  prospect  of  an  income  of 
two  or  three  thousand,  and  contents  himself  with  the  least 
sum  which  will  keep  soul  and  body  together,  without  the 
possibility  of  laying  up  a  cent  for  his  family  in  case  of  his 
sickness  and  death.  This,  sir,  is  what  I  call  giving  in 
charity." 


THE  CANAL  BOAT 

OF  all  the  ways  of  traveling  which  obtain  among  our 
locomotive  nation,  this  said  vehicle,  the  canal  boat,  is  the 
most  absolutely  prosaic  and  inglorious.  There  is  something 
picturesque,  nay,  almost  sublime,  in  the  lordly  march  of 
your  well-built,  high-bred  steamboat.  Go,  take  your  stand 
on  some  overhanging  bluff,  where  the  blue  Ohio  winds  its 
thread  of  silver,  or  the  sturdy  Mississippi  tears  its  path 
through  unbroken  forests,  and  it  will  do  your  heart  good  to 
see  the  gallant  boat  walking  the  waters  with  unbroken  and 
powerful  tread  ;  and,  like  some  fabled  monster  of  the  wave, 
breathing  fire,  and  making  the  shores  resound  with  its  deep 
respirations.  Then  there  is  something  mysterious,  even 
awful,  in  the  power  of  steam.  See  it  curling  up  against  a 
blue  sky,  some  rosy  morning  —  graceful,  floating,  intangible, 
and  to  all  appearance  the  softest  and  gentlest  of  all  spiritual 
things ;  and  then  think  that  it  is  this  fairy  spirit  that  keeps 
all  the  world  alive  and  hot  with  motion ;  think  how  excel 
lent  a  servant  it  is,  doing  all  sorts  of  gigantic  works,  like  the 
genii  of  old ;  and  yet,  if  you  let  slip  the  talisman  only  for 
a  moment,  what  terrible  advantage  it  will  take  of  you  !  and 
you  will  confess  that  steam  has  some  claims  both  to  the  beau 
tiful  and  the  terrible.  For  our  own  part,  when  we  are  down 
among  the  machinery  of  a  steamboat  in  full  play,  we  con 
duct  ourselves  very  reverently,  for  we  consider  it  as  a  very 
serious  neighborhood ;  and  every  time  the  steam  whizzes 
with  such  red-hot  determination  from  the  escape  valve,  we 
start  as  if  some  of  the  spirits  were  after  us.  But  in  a  canal 
boat  there  is  no  power,  no  mystery,  no  danger  ;  one  cannot 


132  THE    CANAL   BOAT 

blow  up,  one  cannot  be  drowned,  unless  by  some  special 
effort :  one  sees  clearly  all  there  is  in  the  case  —  a  horse,  a 
rope,  and  a  muddy  strip  of  water  —  and  that  is  all. 

Did  you  ever  try  it,  reader  ?  If  not,  take  an  imaginary 
trip  with  us,  just  for  experiment.  "  There  's  the  boat !  " 
exclaims  a  passenger  in  the  omnibus,  as  we  are  rolling  down 
from  the  Pittsburgh  Mansion  House  to  the  canal.  "  Where  ?  " 
exclaim  a  dozen  of  voices,  and  forthwith  a  dozen  heads  go 
out  of  the  window.  "  Why,  down  there,  under  that  bridge  ; 
don't  you  see  those  lights  ?  "  "  What !  that  little  thing  ?  " 
exclaims  an  inexperienced  traveler ;  "  dear  me !  we  can't 
half  of  us  get  into  it !  "  "  We !  indeed,"  says  some  old 
hand  in  the  business  ;  "  I  think  you  '11  find  it  will  hold  us 
and  a  dozen  more  loads  like  us."  "  Impossible  !  "  say  some. 
"  You  '11  see,"  say  the  initiated  ;  and,  as  soon  as  you  get 
out,  you  do  see,  and  hear  too,  what  seems  like  a  general 
breaking  loose  from  the  Tower  of  Babel,  amid  a  perfect  hail 
storm  of  trunks,  boxes,  valises,  carpet-bags,  and  every  de- 
scribable  and  indescribable  form  of  what  a  Westerner  calls 
"plunder." 

"That's  my  trunk!"  barks  out  a  big,  round  man. 
"  That  's  my  bandbox  !  "  screams  a  heart-stricken  old  lady, 
in  terror  for  her  immaculate  Sunday  caps.  "  Where  's  my 
little  red  box  ?  I  had  two  carpet-bags  and  a  —  My  trunk 
had  a  scarle —  Hallo  !  where  are  you  going  with  that 
portmanteau  ?  Husband  !  husband  !  do  see  after  the  large 
basket  and  the  little  hair  trunk  —  oh,  and  the  baby's  little 
chair  !  "  "  Go  below  —  go  below,  for  mercy's  sake,  my 
dear  ;  I  '11  see  to  the  baggage."  At  last,  the  feminine  part 
of  creation,  perceiving  that,  in  this  particular  instance, 
they  gain  nothing  by  public  speaking,  are  content  to  be  led 
quietly  under  hatches  ;  and  amusing  is  the  look  of  dismay 
which  each  newcomer  gives  to  the  confined  quarters  that 
present  themselves.  Those  who  were  so  ignorant  of  the 
power  of  compression  as  to  suppose  the  boat  scarce  large 


THE   CANAL   BOAT  133 

enough  to  contain  them  and  theirs,  find,  with  dismay,  a  re 
spectable  colony  of  old  ladies,  babies,  mothers,  big  baskets, 
and  carpet-bags  already  established.  "  Mercy  on  us  !  "  says 
one,  after  surveying  the  little  room,  about  ten  feet  long  and 
six  high,  "  where  are  we  all  to  sleep  to-night  ?  "  "  Oh, 
me !  what  a  sight  of  children  ! "  says  a  young  lady,  in  a 
despairing  tone.  "  Poh  !  "  says  an  initiated  traveler ;  "  chil 
dren  !  scarce  any  here ;  let 's  see,  —  one  ;  the  woman  in  the 
corner,  two ;  that  child  with  the  bread  and  butter,  three ; 
and  then  there 's  that  other  woman  with  two.  Really,  it 's 
quite  moderate  for  a  canal  boat.  However,  we  can't  tell  till 
they  have  all  come." 

"  All !  for  mercy's  sake,  you  don't  say  there  are  any  more 
coming !  "  exclaim  two  or  three  in  a  breath  j  "  they  can't 
come  ;  there  is  not  room  !  " 

Notwithstanding  the  impressive  utterance  of  this  sentence, 
the  contrary  is  immediately  demonstrated.by  the  appearance 
of  a  very  corpulent,  elderly  lady,  with  three  well-grown 
daughters,  who  come  down  looking  about  them  most  com 
placently,  entirely  regardless  of  the  unchristian  looks  of  the 
company.  What  a  mercy  it  is  that  fat  people  are  always 
good-natured ! 

After  this  follows  an  indiscriminate  raining  down  of  all 
shapes,  sizes,  sexes,  and  ages  —  men,  women,  children,  ba 
bies,  and  nurses.  The  state  of  feeling  becomes  perfectly 
desperate.  Darkness  gathers  on  all  faces.  "  We  shall  be 
smothered  !  we  shall  be  crowded  to  death  !  we  can't  stay 
here  !  "  are  heard  faintly  from  one  and  another ;  and  yet, 
though  the  boat  grows  no  wider,  the  walls  no  higher,  they 
do  live,  and  do  stay  there,  in  spite  of  repeated  protestations 
to  the  contrary.  Truly,  as  Sam  Slick  says,  "  there 's  a 
sight  of  wear  in  human  natur'." 

But,  meanwhile,  the  children  grow  sleepy,  and  divers 
interesting  little  duets  and  trios  arise  from  one  part  or 
another  of  the  cabin. 


134  THE   CANAL   BOAT 

"  Hush,  Johnny  !  be  a  good  boy,"  says  a  pale,  nursing 
mamma,  to  a  great,  bristling,  white-headed  phenomenon, 
who  is  kicking  very  much  at  large  in  her  lap. 

"  I  won't  be  a  good  boy,  neither,"  responds  Johnny,  with 
interesting  explicitness ;  "  I  want  to  go  to  bed,  and  so-o-o-o  !  " 
and  Johnny  makes  up  a  mouth  as  big  as  a  teacup,  and  roars 
with  good  courage,  and  his  mamma  asks  him  "if  he  ever 
saw  pa  do  so,"  and  tells  him  that  "  he  is  mamma's  dear, 
good  little  boy,  and  must  not  make  a  noise,"  with  various 
observations  of  the  kind,  which  are  so  strikingly  efficacious 
in  such  cases.  Meanwhile,  the  domestic  concert  in  other 
quarters  proceeds  with  vigor.  "  Mamma,  I  'm  tired !  " 
bawls  a  child.  "  Where  's  the  baby's  nightgown  ?  "  calls 
a  nurse.  "  Do  take  Peter  upon  your  lap,  and  keep  him  still." 
"  Pray  get  out  some  biscuits  to  stop  their  mouths."  Mean 
while,  sundry  babies  strike  in  "  con  spirito,"  as  the  music 
books  have  it,  and  execute  various  flourishes ;  the  disconso 
late  mothers  sigh,  and  look  as  if  all  was  over  with  them  ; 
and  the  young  ladies  appear  extremely  disgusted,  and  won 
der  "  what  business  women  have  to  be  traveling  round 
with  babies." 

To  these  troubles  succeeds  the  turning-out  scene,  when  the 
whole  caravan  is  ejected  into  the  gentlemen's  cabin,  that  the 
beds  may  be  made.  The  red  curtains  are  put  down,  and  in 
solemn  silence  all  the  last  mysterious  preparations  begin.  At 
length  it  is  announced  that  all  is  ready.  Forthwith  the  whole 
company  rush  back,  and  find  the  walls  embellished  by  a  series 
of  little  shelves,  about  a  foot  wide,  each  furnished  with  a  mat 
tress  and  bedding,  and  hooked  to  the  ceiling  by  a  very  sus 
piciously  slender  cord.  Direful  are  the  ruminations  and  ex 
clamations  of  inexperienced  travelers,  particularly  young 
ones,  as  they  eye  these  very  equivocal  accommodations, 
"  What,  sleep  up  there  !  I  won't  sleep  on  one  of  those  top 
shelves,  I  know.  The  cords  will  certainly  break."  The 
chambermaid  here  takes  up  the  conversation,  and  solemnly 


THE   CANAL   BOAT  135 

assures  them  that  such  an  accident  is  not  to  be  thought  of  at 
all ;  that  it  is  a  natural  impossibility  —  a  thing  that  could 
not  happen  without  an  actual  miracle  ;  and  since  it  becomes 
increasingly  evident  that  thirty  ladies  cannot  all  sleep  on  the 
lowest  shelf,  there  is  some  effort  made  to  exercise  faith  in 
this  doctrine ;  nevertheless,  all  look  on  their  neighbors 
with  fear  and  trembling  ;  and  when  the  stout  lady  talks  of 
taking  a  shelf,  she  is  most  urgently  pressed  to  change  places 
with  her  alarmed  neighbor  below.  Points  of  location  being 
after  a  while  adjusted,  comes  the  last  struggle.  Everybody 
wants  to  take  off  a  bonnet  or  look  for  a  shawl,  to  find  a  cloak, 
or  get  a  carpet-bag,  and  all  set  about  it  with  such  zeal  that 
nothing  can  be  done.  "  Ma'am,  you  're  on  my  foot !  "  says 
one.  "  Will  you  please  to  move,  ma'am  ?  "  says  somebody, 
who  is  gasping  and  struggling  behind  you.  "  Move  !  "  you 
echo.  "  Indeed,  I  should  be  very  glad  to,  but  I  don't  see 
much  prospect  of  it."  "  Chambermaid  !  "  calls  a  lady,  who 
is  struggling  among  a  heap  of  carpet-bags  and  children  at  one 
end  of  the  cabin.  "  Ma'am  ! "  echoes  the  poor  chamber 
maid,  who  is  wedged  fast,  in  a  similar  situation,  at  the  other. 
"  Where  's my  cloak,  chambermaid  ?  "  "I  'd find  it,  ma'am, 
if  I  could  move."  "  Chambermaid,  my  basket !  "  "  Cham 
bermaid,  my  parasol  !  "  "  Chambermaid,  my  carpet-bag  !  " 
"Mamma,  they  push  me  so!"  "Hush,  child,  —  crawl 
under  there,  and  lie  still  till  I  can  undress  you."  At  last, 
however,  the  various  distresses  are  over,  the  babies  sink  to 
sleep,  and  even  that  much-enduring  being,  the  chambermaid, 
seeks  out  some  corner  for  repose.  Tired  and  drowsy,  you 
are  just  sinking  into  a  doze,  when  bang  !  goes  the  boat  against 
the  sides  of  a  lock ;  ropes  scrape,  men  run  and  shout,  and 
up  fly  the  heads  of  all  the  top  shelfites,  who  are  generally 
the  more  juvenile  and  airy  part  of  the  company. 

"  What 's  that !  what 's  that !  "  flies  from  mouth  to  mouth, 
and  forthwith  they  proceed  to  awaken  their  respective  rela 
tions,  "  Mother  !  Aunt  Hannah  !  do  wake  up  ;  what  is 


136  THE   CANAL   BOAT 

this   awful    noise?'7       "Oh,   only   a  lock!"      "Pray   be 
still,"  groan  out  the  sleepy  members  from  below. 

"  A  lock !  "  exclaim  the  vivacious  creatures,  ever  on  the 
alert  for  information  ;   "  and  what  is  a  lock,  pray  ?  " 

"  Don't  you  know  what  a  lock  is,  you  silly  creatures  ?  Do 
lie  down  and  go  to  sleep." 

"  But  say,  there  ain't  any  danger  in  a  lock,  is  there  ?  "  re 
spond  the  querists.  "  Danger  !  "  exclaims  a  deaf  old  lady, 
poking  up  her  head  ;  "  what 's  the  matter  ?  There  hain't 
nothin'  burst,  has  there  ?  "  "  No,  no,  no  !  "  exclaim  the  pro 
voked  and  despairing  opposition  party,  who  find  that  there 
is  no  such  thing  as  going  to  sleep  till  they  have  made  the 
old  lady  below  and  the  young  ladies  above  understand  ex 
actly  the  philosophy  of  a  lock.  After  a  while  the  conver 
sation  again  subsides ;  again  all  is  still ;  you  hear  only  the 
trampling  of  horses  and  the  rippling  of  the  rope  in  the  water, 
and  sleep  again  is  stealing  over  you.  You  doze,  you  dream, 
and  all  of  a  sudden  you  are  startled  by  a  cry,  "  Chambermaid  ! 
wake  up  the  lady  that  wants  to  be  set  ashore."  Up  jumps 
chambermaid,  and  up  jump  the  lady  and  two  children,  and 
forthwith  form  a  committee  of  inquiry  as  to  ways  and  means. 
"  Where  's  my  bonnet  ?  "  says  the  lady,  half  awake,  and 
fumbling  among  the  various  articles  of  that  name.  "I 
thought  I  hung  it  up  behind  the  door."  "  Can't  you  find  it  ?  " 
says  poor  chambermaid,  yawning  and  rubbing  her  eyes.  "  Oh, 
yes,  here  it  is,"  says  the  lady  ;  and  then  the  cloak,  the  shawl, 
the  gloves,  the  shoes,  receive  each  a  separate  discussion.  At 
last  all  seems  ready,  and  they  begin  to  move  off,  when,  lo  ! 
Peter's  cap  is  missing.  "  Now,  where  can  it  be  ?  "  solilo 
quizes  the  lady.  "  I  put  it  right  here  by  the  table  leg ; 
maybe  it  got  into  some  of  the  berths."  At  this  suggestion, 
the  chambermaid  takes  the  candle,  and  goes  round  deliber 
ately  to  every  berth,  poking  the  light  directly  in  the  face  of 
every  sleeper.  "  Here  it  is,"  she  exclaims,  pulling  at  some 
thing  black  under  one  pillow.  "  No,  indeed,  those  are  my 


THE   CANAL   BOAT  137 

shoes,"  says  the  vexed  sleeper.  "  Maybe  it 's  here/7  she 
resumes,  darting  upon  something  dark  in  another  berth. 
"  No,  that 's  my  bag,"  responds  the  occupant.  The  cham 
bermaid  then  proceeds  to  turn  over  all  the  children  on  the 
floor,  to  see  if  it  is  not  under  them,  in  the  course  of  which 
process  they  are  most  agreeably  waked  up  and  enlivened ; 
and  when  everybody  is  broad  awake,  and  most  uncharitably 
wishing  the  cap,  and  Peter  too,  at  the  bottom  of  the  canal, 
the  good  lady  exclaims,  "  Well,  if  this  is  n't  lucky  ;  here  I 
had  it  safe  in  my  basket  all  the  time  !  "  And  she  departs 
amid  the  —  what  shall  I  say,  execrations  ?  —  of  the  whole 
company,  ladies  though  they  be. 

Well,  after  this  follows  a  hushing  up  and  wiping  up  among 
the  juvenile  population,  and  a  series  of  remarks  commences 
from  the  various  shelves,  of  a  very  edifying  and  instructive 
tendency.  One  says  that  the  woman  did  not  seem  to  know 
where  anything  was  ;  another  says  that  she  has  waked  them 
all  up  ;  a  third  adds  that  she  has  waked  up  all  the  children, 
too ;  and  the  elderly  ladies  make  moral  reflections  on  the 
importance  of  putting  your  things  where  you  can  find  them 
—  being  always  ready  ;  which  observations,  being  delivered 
in  an  exceedingly  doleful  and  drowsy  tone,  form  a  sort  of 
sub-bass  to  the  lively  chattering  of  the  upper  shelfites,  who 
declare  that  they  feel  quite  wide  awake, — that  they  don't 
think  they  shall  go  to  sleep  again  to-night,  —  and  discourse 
over  everything  in  creation,  until  you  heartily  wish  you  were 
enough  related  to  them  to  give  them  a  scolding. 

At  last,  however,  voice  after  voice  drops  off ;  you  fall  into 
a  most  refreshing  slumber  ;  it  seems  to  you  that  you  sleep 
about  a  quarter  of  an  hour,  when  the  chambermaid  pulls 
you  by  the  sleeve.  "  Will  you  please  to  get  up,  ma'am  ? 
We  want  to  make  the  beds."  You  start  and  stare.  Sure 
enough,  the  night  is  gone.  So  much  for  sleeping  on  board 
canal  boats. 

Let  us  not  enumerate  the  manifold  perplexities  of  the 


138  THE   CANAL   BOAT 

morning  toilet  in  a  place  where  every  lady  realizes  most 
forcibly  the  condition  of  the  old  woman  who  lived  under  a 
broom :  "  All  she  wanted  was  elbow  room."  Let  us  not 
tell  how  one  glass  is  made  to  answer  for  thirty  fair  faces, 
one  ewer  and  vase  for  thirty  lavations  ;  and  —  tell  it  not  in 
Gath  !  —  one  towel  for  a  company  !  Let  us  not  intimate 
how  ladies'  shoes  have,  in  a  night,  clandestinely  slid  into  the 
gentlemen's  cabin,  and  gentlemen's  boots  elbowed,  or  rather, 
toed  their  way  among  ladies'  gear,  nor  recite  the  exclama 
tions  after  runaway  property  that  are  heard.  "  I  can't  find 
nothin'  of  Johnny's  shoe  !  "  "  Here  's  a  shoe  in  the  water 
pitcher  —  is  this  it  ?  "  "  My  side-combs  are  gone  !  "  ex 
claims  a  nymph  with  disheveled  curls.  "  Massy  !  do  look 
at  my  bonnet !  "  exclaims  an  old  lady,  elevating  an  article 
crushed  into  as  many  angles  as  there  are  pieces  in  a  mince 
pie.  "  I  never  did  sleep  so  much  together  in  my  life," 
echoes  a  poor  little  French  lady,  whom  despair  has  driven 
into  talking  English. 

But  our  shortening  paper  warns  us  not  to  prolong  our 
catalogue  of  distresses  beyond  reasonable  bounds,  and  there 
fore  we  will  close  with  advising  all  our  friends,  who  intend 
to  try  this  way  of  traveling  for  pleasure,  to  take  a  good  stock 
both  of  patience  and  clean  towels  with  them,  for  we  think 
that  they  will  find  abundant  need  for  both. 


FEELING 

THERE  is  one  way  of  studying  human  nature,  which  sur 
veys  mankind  only  as  a  set  of  instruments  for  the  accom 
plishment  of  personal  plans.  There  is  another,  which  regards 
them  simply  as  a  gallery  of  pictures,  to  be  admired  or  laughed 
at  as  the  caricature  or  the  beau  ideal  predominates.  A  third 
way  regards  them  as  human  beings,  having  hearts  that  can 
suffer  and  enjoy,  that  can  be  improved  or  be  ruined  j  as 
those  who  are  linked  to  us  by  mysterious  reciprocal  influ 
ences,  by  the  common  dangers  of  a  present  existence,  and 
the  uncertainties  of  a  future  one ;  as  presenting,  wherever 
we  meet  them,  claims  on  our  sympathy  and  assistance. 

Those  who  adopt  the  last  method  are  interested  in  human 
beings,  not  so  much  by  present  attractions  as  by  their  capa 
bilities  as  intelligent,  immortal  beings ;  by  a  high  belief  of 
what  every  mind  may  attain  in  an  immortal  existence ;  by 
anxieties  for  its  temptations  and  dangers,  and  often  by  the 
perception  of  errors  and  faults  which  threaten  its  ruin.  The 
first  two  modes  are  adopted  by  the  great  mass  of  society, 
the  last  is  the  office  of  those  few  scattered  stars  in  the  sky 
of  life,  who  look  down  on  its  dark  selfishness  to  remind  us 
that  there  is  a  world  of  light  and  love. 

To  this  class  did  He  belong,  whose  rising  and  setting  on 
earth  were  for  "  the  healing  of  the  nations  ;  "  and  to  this 
class  has  belonged  many  a  pure  and  devoted  spirit,  like  him 
shining  to  cheer,  like  him  fading  away  into  the  heavens. 
To  this  class  many  a  one  wishes  to  belong,  who  has  an  eye 
to  distinguish  the  divinity  of  virtue,  without  the  resolution 
to  attain  it ;  who,  while  they  sweep  along  with  the  selfish 


140  FEELING 

current  of  society,  still  regret  that  society  is  not  different 
—  that  they  themselves  are  not  different.  If  this  train  of 
thought  has  no  very  particular  application  to  what  follows, 
it  was  nevertheless  suggested  by  it,  and  of  its  relevancy 
others  must  judge. 

Look  into  this  schoolroom.  It  is  a  warm,  sleepy  after 
noon  in  July  j  there  is  scarcely  air  enough  to  stir  the  leaves 
of  the  tall  buttonwood-tree  before  the  door,  or  to  lift  the 
loose  leaves  of  the  copy-book  in  the  window ;  the  sun  has 
been  diligently  shining  into  those  curtainless  west  windows 
ever  since  three  o'clock,  upon  those  blotted  and  mangled 
desks,  and  those  decrepit  and  tottering  benches,  and  that 
great  armchair,  the  high  place  of  authority.  You  can 
faintly  hear,  about  the  door,  the  "  craw,  craw,"  of  some 
neighboring  chickens,  which  have  stepped  around  to  con 
sider  the  dinner  baskets,  and  pick  up  the  crumbs  of  the 
noon's  repast.  For  a  marvel,  the  busy  school  is  still,  be 
cause,  in  truth,  it  is  too  warm  to  stir.  You  will  find  no 
thing  to  disturb  your  meditation  on  character,  for  you  cannot 
hear  the  beat  of  those  little  hearts,  nor  the  bustle  of  all 
those  busy  thoughts. 

Now  look  around.  Who  of  these  is  the  most  interest 
ing  ?  Is  it  that  tall,  slender,  hazel-eyed  boy,  with  a  glance 
like  a  falcon,  whose  elbows  rest  on  his  book  as  he  gazes  out 
on  the  great  buttonwood-tree,  and  is  calculating  how  he 
shall  fix  his  squirrel-trap  when  school  is  out  ?  Or  is  it 
that  curly-headed  little  rogue,  who  is  shaking  with  repressed 
laughter  at  seeing  a  chicken  roll  over  in  a  dinner  basket  ? 
Or  is  it  that  arch  boy  with  black  eyelashes,  and  deep,  mis 
chievous  dimple  in  his  cheeks,  who  is  slyly  fixing  a  fish 
hook  to  the  skirts  of  the  master's  coat,  yet  looking  as  ab 
stracted  as  Archimedes  whenever  the  good  man  turns  his 
head  that  way  ?  No  ;  these  are  intelligent,  bright,  beauti 
ful,  but  it  is  not  these.  Perhaps,  then,  it  is  that  sleepy 
little  girl,  with  golden  curls,  and  a  mouth  like  a  half-blown 


FEELING  141 

rosebud.  See,  the  small  brass  thimble  has  fallen  to  the 
floor,  her  patchwork  drops  from  her  lap,  her  blue  eyes  close 
like  two  sleepy  violets,  her  little  head  is  nodding,  and  she 
sinks  on  her  sister7  s  shoulder :  surely  it  is  she.  No,  it  is 
not.  But  look  in  that  corner.  Do  you  see  that  boy  with 
such  a  gloomy  countenance  —  so  vacant,  yet  so  ill-natured  ? 
He  is  doing  nothing,  and  he  very  seldom  does  anything. 
He  is  surly  and  gloomy  in  his  looks  and  actions.  He 
never  showed  any  more  aptitude  for  saying  or  doing  a  pretty 
thing  than  his  straight  white  hair  does  for  curling.  He  is 
regularly  blamed  and  punished  every  day,  and  the  more  he 
is  blamed  and  punished  the  worse  he  grows.  None  of  the 
boys  and  girls  in  school  will  play  with  him  ;  or,  if  they  do, 
they  will  be  sorry  for  it.  And  every  day  the  master  as 
sures  him  that  "  he  does  not  know  what  to  do  with  him,'7 
and  that  he  "  makes  him  more  trouble  than  any  boy  in 
school,"  with  similar  judicious  information,  that  has  a 
striking  tendency  to  promote  improvement.  That  is  the 
boy  to  whom  I  apply  the  title  of  "  the  most  interesting 
one." 

He  is  interesting  because  he  is  not  pleasing  ;  because  he 
has  bad  habits  ;  because  he  does  wrong ;  because,  under  pres 
ent  influences,  he  is  always  likely  to  do  wrong.  He  is  inter 
esting  because  he  has  become  what  he  is  now  by  means  of 
the  very  temperament  which  often  makes  the  noblest  virtue. 
It  is  feeling,  acuteness  of  feeling,  which  has  given  that  coun 
tenance  its  expression,  that  character  its  moroseness. 

He  has  no  father,  and  that  long-suffering  friend,  his 
mother,  is  gone  too.  Yet  he  has  relations,  and  kind  ones 
too  ;  and,  in  the  compassionate  language  of  worldly  charity, 
it  may  be  said  of  him,  "  He  would  have  nothing  of  which 
to  complain,  if  he  would  only  behave  himself." 

His  little  sister  is  always  bright,  always  pleasant  and 
cheerful ;  and  his  friends  say,  "  Why  should  not  he  be  so 
too  ?  He  is  in  exactly  the  same  circumstances."  No,  he 


142  FEELING 

is  not.  In  one  circumstance  they  differ.  He  has  a  mind 
to  feel  and  remember  everything  that  can  pain  ;  she  can 
feel  and  remember  but  little.  If  you  blame  him,  he  is 
exasperated,  gloomy,  and  cannot  forget  it.  If  you  blame 
her,  she  can  say  she  has  done  wrong  in  a  moment,  and  all 
is  forgotten.  Her  mind  can  no  more  be  wounded  than 
the  little  brook  where  she  loves  to  play.  The  bright  waters 
close  again,  and  smile  and  prattle  as  merry  as  before. 
Which  is  the  most  desirable  temperament  ?  It  would  be 
hard  to  say.  The  power  of  feeling  is  necessary  for  all  that 
is  noble  in  man,  and  yet  it  involves  the  greatest  risks. 
They  who  catch  at  happiness  on  the  bright  surface  of  things 
secure  a  portion,  such  as  it  is,  writh  more  certainty  ;  those 
who  dive  for  it  in  the  waters  of  deeper  feeling,  if  they  suc 
ceed,  will  bring  up  pearls  and  diamonds,  but  if  they  sink 
they  are  lost  forever  ! 

But  now  comes  Saturday,  and  school  is  just  out.  Can 
any  one  of  my  readers  remember  the  rapturous  prospect  of 
a  long,  bright  Saturday  afternoon  ?  "  Where  are  you  go 
ing  ?  "  "  Will  you  come  and  see  me  ?  "  "  We  are  going 
a-fishing  !  "  "  Let  us  go  a-strawberrying  !  "  may  be  heard 
rising  from  the  happy  group.  But  no  one  comes  near  the 
ill-humored  James,  and  the  little  party  going  to  visit  his 
sister  "  wish  James  was  out  of  the  way."  He  sees  every 
motion,  hears  every  whisper,  knows,  suspects,  feels  it  all, 
and  turns  to  go  home  more  sullen  and  ill-tempered  than 
common.  The  world  looks  dark  —  nobody  loves  him  — 
and  he  is  told  that  it  is  "  all  his  own  fault,"  and  that  makes 
the  matter  still  worse.  When  the  little  party  arrive,  he  is 
suspicious  and  irritable,  and,  of  course,  soon  excommunicated. 
Then,  as  he  stands  in  disconsolate  anger,  looking  over  the 
garden  fence  at  the  gay  group  making  dandelion  chains,  and 
playing  baby  house  under  the  trees,  he  wonders  why  he  is 
not  like  other  children.  He  wishes  he  were  different,  and 
yet  he  does  not  know  what  to  do.  He  looks  around,  and 


FEELING  143 

everything  is  blooming  and  bright.  His  little  bed  of  flowers 
is  even  brighter  and  sweeter  than  ever  before,  and  a  new 
rose  is  just  opening  on  his  rosebush.  There  goes  pussy, 
too,  racing  and  scampering,  with  little  Ellen  after  her,  in 
among  the  alleys  and  flowers ;  and  the  birds  are  singing  in 
the  trees  ;  and  the  soft  winds  brush  the  blossoms  of  the 
sweet  pea  against  his  cheek  ;  and  yet,  though  all  nature 
looks  on  him  so  kindly,  he  is  wretched. 

Let  us  now  change  the  scene.  Why  is  that  crowded  as 
sembly  so  attentive  —  so  silent  ?  Who  is  speaking  ?  It  is 
our  old  friend,  the  little  disconsolate  schoolboy.  But  his 
eyes  are  flashing  with  intellect,  his  face  fervent  with  emo 
tion,  his  voice  breathes  like  music,  and  every  mind  is  en 
chained.  Again,  it  is  a  splendid  sunset,  and  yonder  enthu 
siast  meets  it  face  to  face,  as  a  friend.  He  is  silent  —  rapt 
—  happy.  He  feels  the  poetry  which  God  has  written ; 
he  is  touched  by  it,  as  God  meant  that  the  feeling  spirit 
should  be  touched.  Again,  he  is  watching  by  the  bed  of 
sickness,  and  it  is  blessed  to  have  such  a  watcher  !  antici 
pating  every  want ;  relieving,  not  in  a  cold,  uninterested 
way,  but  with  the  quick  perceptions,  the  tenderness,  the  gen 
tleness  of  an  angel.  Follow  him  into  the  circle  of  friend 
ship,  and  why  is  he  so  loved  and  trusted  ?  Why  can  you 
so  easily  tell  to  him  what  you  can  say  to  no  one  else  besides  ? 
Why  is  it  that  all  around  him  feel  that  he  can  understand, 
appreciate,  be  touched  by  all  that  touches  them  ?  And 
when  heaven  uncloses  its  doors  of  light,  when  all  its  know 
ledge,  its  purity,  its  bliss,  rises  on  the  eye  and  passes  into 
the  soul,  who  then  will  be  looked  on  as  the  one  who  might 
be  envied  —  he  who  can,  or  he  who  cannot  feel  ? 


THE   SEAMSTEESS 

"  Few,  save  the  poor,  feel  for  the  poor  j 

The  rich  know  not  how  hard 
It  is  to  be  of  needful  food 
And  needful  rest  debarred. 

"  Their  paths  are  paths  of  plenteousness  ; 

They  sleep  on  silk  and  down  ; 
They  never  think  how  wearily 
The  weaiy  head  lies  down. 

"  They  never  by  the  window  sit, 

And  see  the  gay  pass  by, 
Yet  take  their  weary  work  again, 
And  with  a  mournful  eye." 

L.  E.  L. 

HOWEVER  fine  and  elevated,  in  a  sentimental  point  of 
view,  may  have  been  the  poetry  of  this  gifted  writer,  we 
think  we  have  never  seen  anything  from  this  source  that 
ought  to  give  a  better  opinion  of  her  than  the  little  ballad 
from  which  the  above  verses  are  taken. 

They  show  that  the  accomplished  authoress  possessed,  not 
merely  a  knowledge  of  the  dreamy  ideal  wants  of  human 
beings,  but  the  more  pressing  and  homely  ones,  which  the 
fastidious  and  poetical  are  often  the  last  to  appreciate.  The 
sufferings  of  poverty  are  not  confined  to  those  of  the  com 
mon,  squalid,  every-day-inured  to  hardships,  and  ready,  with 
open  hand,  to  receive  charity,  let  it  come  to  them  as  it  will. 
There  is  another  class  on  whom  it  presses  with  still  heavier 
power  —  the  generous,  the  decent,  the  self-respecting,  who 
have  struggled  with  their  lot  in  silence,  "  bearing  all  things, 
hoping  all  things  "  and  willing  to  endure  all  things,  rather 
than  breathe  a  word  of  complaint,  or  to  acknowledge,  even 


THE   SEAMSTRESS  145 

to  themselves,  that  their  own  efforts  will  not  be  sufficient  for 
their  own  necessities. 

Pause  with  me  a  while  at  the  door  of  yonder  room, 
whose  small  window  overlooks  a  little  court  below.  It  is 
inhabited  by  a  widow  and  her  daughter,  dependent  entirely 
on  the  labors  of  the  needle,  and  those  other  slight  and  pre 
carious  resources,  which  are  all  that  remain  to  woman  when 
left  to  struggle  her  way  through  the  world  alone.  It  con 
tains  all  their  small  earthly  store,  and  there  is  scarce  an 
article  of  its  little  stock  of  furniture  that  has  not  been 
thought  of,  and  toiled  for,  and  its  price  calculated  over  and 
over  again,  before  everything  could  be  made  right  for  its 
purchase.  Every  article  is  arranged  with  the  utmost  neat 
ness  and  care ;  nor  is  the  most  costly  furniture  of  a  fashion 
able  parlor  more  sedulously  guarded  from  a  scratch  or  a  rub, 
than  is  that  brightly  varnished  bureau,  and  that  neat  cherry 
tea-table  and  bedstead.  The  floor,  too,  boasted  once  a  car 
pet  ;  but  old  Time  has  been  busy  with  it,  picking  a  hole 
here,  and  making  a  thin  place  there ;  and  though  the  old 
fellow  has  been  followed  up  by  the  most  indefatigable  zeal 
in  darning,  the  marks  of  his  mischievous  fingers  are  too 
plain  to  be  mistaken.  It  is  true,  a  kindly  neighbor  has 
given  a  bit  of  faded  baize,  which  has  been  neatly  clipped 
and  bound,  and  spread  down  over  an  entirely  unmanageable 
hole  in  front  of  the  fireplace ;  and  other  places  have  been 
repaired  with  pieces  of  different  colors ;  and  yet,  after  all, 
it  is  evident  that  the  poor  carpet  is  not  long  for  this  world. 

But  the  best  face  is  put  upon  everything.  The  little 
cupboard  in  the  corner,  that  contains  a  few  china  cups,  and 
one  or  two  antiquated  silver  spoons,  relics  of  better  days, 
is  arranged  with  jealous  neatness,  and  the  white  muslin 
window  curtain,  albeit  the  muslin  be  old,  has  been  care 
fully  whitened  and  starched,  and  smoothly  ironed,  and  put 
up  with  exact  precision ;  and  on  the  bureau,  covered  by  a 
snowy  cloth,  are  arranged  a  few  books  and  other  memorials 


146  THE   SEAMSTRESS 

of  former  times,  and  a  faded  miniature,  which,  though  it 
have  little  about  it  to  interest  a  stranger,  is  more  precious 
to  the  poor  widow  than  everything  besides.  Mrs.  Ames 
is  seated  in  her  rocking-chair,  supported  by  a  pillow,  and 
busy  cutting  out  work,  while  her  daughter,  a  slender,  sickly- 
looking  girl,  is  sitting  by  the  window,  intent  on  some  fine 
stitching.  Mrs.  Ames  in  former  days  was  the  wife  of  a 
respectable  merchant,  and  the  mother  of  an  affectionate 
family.  But  evil  fortune  had  followed  her  with  a  steadi 
ness  that  seemed  like  the  stern  decree  of  some  adverse  fate 
rather  than  the  ordinary  dealings  of  a  merciful  Providence. 
First  came  a  heavy  run  of  losses  in  business  ;  then  long 
and  expensive  sickness  in  the  family,  and  the  death  of  chil 
dren.  Then  there  was  the  selling  of  the  large  house  and 
elegant  furniture,  to  retire  to  a  humbler  style  of  living ;  and 
finally,  the  sale  of  all  the  property,  with  the  view  of  quit 
ting  the  shores  of  a  native  land,  and  commencing  life  again 
in  a  new  one.  But  scarcely  had  the  exiled  family  found 
themselves  in  the  port  of  a  foreign  land,  when  the  father 
was  suddenly  smitten  down  by  the  hand  of  death,  and  his 
lonely  grave  made  in  a  land  of  strangers.  The  widow, 
broken-hearted  and  discouraged,  had  still  a  wearisome  jour 
ney  before  her  ere  she  could  reach  any  whom  she  could 
consider  as  her  friends.  With  her  two  daughters,  entirely 
unattended,  and  with  her  finances  impoverished  by  detention 
and  sickness,  she  performed  the  tedious  journey. 

Arrived  at  the  place  of  her  destination,  she  found  her 
self  not  only  without  immediate  resources,  but  considerably 
in  debt  to  one  who  had  advanced  money  for  her  traveling 
expenses.  With  silent  endurance  she  met  the  necessities 
of  her  situation.  Her  daughters,  delicately  reared,  and 
hitherto  carefully  educated,  were  placed  out  to  service,  and 
Mrs.  Ames  sought  for  employment  as  a  nurse.  The  younger 
child  fell  sick,  and  the  hard  earnings  of  the  mother  were 
all  exhausted  in  the  care  of  her ;  and  though  she  recovered 


THE   SEAMSTRESS  147 

in  part,  she  was  declared  by  her  physician  to  be  the  victim 
of  a  disease  which  would  never  leave  her  till  it  terminated 
her  life.  As  soon,  however,  as  her  daughter  was  so  far 
restored  as  not  to  need  her  immediate  care,  Mrs.  Ames 
resumed  her  laborious  employment.  Scarcely  had  she  been 
able,  in  this  way,  to  discharge  the  debts  for  her  journey 
and  to  furnish  the  small  room  we  have  described,  when  the 
hand  of  disease  was  laid  heavily  on  herself.  Too  resolute 
and  persevering  to  give  way  to  the  first  attacks  of  pain  and 
weakness,  she  still  continued  her  fatiguing  employment  till 
her  system  was  entirely  prostrated.  Thus  all  possibility  of 
pursuing  her  business  was  cut  off,  and  nothing  remained 
but  what  could  be  accomplished  by  her  own  and  her  daugh 
ter's  dexterity  at  the  needle.  It  is  at  this  time  we  ask  you 
to  look  in  upon  the  mother  and  daughter. 

Mrs.  Ames  is  sitting  up,  the  first  time  for  a  week,  and 
even  to-day  she  is  scarcely  fit  to  do  so ;  but  she  remembers 
that  the  month  is  coming  round,  and  her  rent  will  soon  be 
due;  and  in  her  feebleness  she  will  stretch  every  nerve 
to  meet  her  engagements  with  punctilious  exactness.  Wea 
ried  at  length  with  cutting  out,  and  measuring,  and  drawing 
threads,  she  leans  back  in  her  chair,  and  her  eye  rests  on 
the  pale  face  of  her  daughter,  who  has  been  sitting  for  two 
hours  intent  on  her  stitching. 

"  Ellen,  my  child,  your  head  aches ;  don't  work  so 
steadily." 

"  Oh,  no,  it  don't  ache  much,"  said  she,  too  conscious  of 
looking  very  much  tired.  Poor  girl !  had  she  remained  in 
the  situation  in  which  she  was  born,  she  would  now  have 
been  skipping  about,  and  enjoying  life  as  other  young  girls 
of  fifteen  do;  but  now  there  is  no  choice  of  employments 
for  her  —  no  youthful  companions  —  no  visiting  —  no 
pleasant  walks  in  the  fresh  air.  Evening  and  morning, 
it  is  all  the  same ;  headache  or  sideache,  it  is  all  one. 
She  must  hold  on  the  same  unvarying  task  —  a  wearisome 


148  THE    SEAMSTRESS 

thing  for  a  girl  of  fifteen.  But  see  !  the  door  opens,  and 
Mrs.  Ames's  face  brightens  as  her  other  daughter  enters. 
Mary  has  become  a  domestic  in  a  neighboring  family,  where 
her  faithfulness  and  kindness  of  heart  have  caused  her  to 
be  regarded  more  as  a  daughter  and  a  sister  than  as  a  ser 
vant.  "  Here,  mother,  is  your  rent  money,"  she  exclaimed  ; 
"  so  do  put  up  your  work  and  rest  a  while.  I  can  get 
enough  to  pay  it  next  time  before  the  month  comes  around 
again." 

"Dear  child,  I  do  wish  you  would  ever  think  to  get  any 
thing  for  yourself,"  said  Mrs.  Ames.  "  I  cannot  consent  to 
use  up  all  your  earnings,  as  I  have  done  lately,  and  all 
Ellen's  too ;  you  must  have  a  new  dress  this  spring,  and 
that  bonnet  of  yours  is  not  decent  any  longer." 

"  Oh,  no,  mother  !  I  have  made  over  my  blue  calico, 
and  you  would  be  surprised  to  see  how  well  it  looks  ;  and 
my  best  frock,  when  it  is  washed  and  darned,  will  answer 
some  time  longer.  Arid  then  Mrs.  Grant  has  given  me  a 
ribbon,  and  when  my  bonnet  is  whitened  and  trimmed  it 
will  look  very  well.  And  so,"  she  added,  "  I  brought  you 
some  wine  this  afternoon ;  you  know  the  doctor  says  you 
need  wine." 

"Dear  child,  I  want  to  see  you  take  some  comfort  of 
your  money  yourself." 

"  Well,  I  do  take  comfort  of  it,  mother.  It  is  more 
comfort  to  be  able  to  help  you  than  to  wear  all  the  finest 
dresses  in  the  world." 

Two  months  from  this  dialogue  found  our  little  family 
still  more  straitened  and  perplexed.  Mrs.  Ames  had  been 
confined  all  the  time  with  sickness,  and  the  greater  part  of 
Ellen's  time  and  strength  was  occupied  with  attending  to 
her.  Very  little  sewing  could  the  poor  girl  now  do,  in  the 
broken  intervals  that  remained  to  her ;  and  the  wages  of 
Mary  were  not  only  used  as  fast  as  earned,  but  she  antici- 


THE    SEAMSTEESS  149 

pated  two  months  in  advance.  Mrs.  Ames  had  been  better 
for  a  day  or  two,  and  had  been  sitting  up,  exerting  all 
her  strength  to  finish  a  set  of  shirts  which  had  been  sent 
in  to  make.  "  The  money  for  them  will  just  pay  our 
rent,"  sighed  she  ;  "  and  if  we  can  do  a  little  more  this 
week  "  — 

"  Dear  mother,  you  are  so  tired,"  said  Ellen  ;  "  do  lie 
down,  and  not  worry  any  more  till  I  come  back." 

Ellen  went  out,  and  passed  on  till  she  came  to  the  door 
of  an  elegant  house,  whose  damask  and  muslin  window  cur 
tains  indicated  a  fashionable  residence.  Mrs.  Elmore  was 
sitting  in  her  splendidly  furnished  parlor,  and  around  her 
lay  various  fancy  articles  which  two  young  girls  were  busily 
unrolling.  "  What  a  lovely  pink  scarf  !  "  said  one,  throw 
ing  it  over  her  shoulders  and  skipping  before  a  mirror  ; 
while  the  other  exclaimed,  "  Do  look  at  these  pocket-hand 
kerchiefs,  mother  !  what  elegant  lace  !  " 

"Well,  girls,"  said  Mrs.  Elmore,  "  these  handkerchiefs 
are  a  shameful  piece  of  extravagance.  I  wonder  you  will 
insist  on  having  such  things." 

"  La,  mamma,  everybody  has  such  now ;  Laura  Seymour 
has  half  a  dozen  that  cost  more  than  these,  and  her  father 
is  no  richer  than  ours." 

"  Well,"  said  Mrs.  Elmore,  "  rich  or  not  rich,  it  seems  to 
make  very  little  odds  ;  we  do  not  seem  to  have  half  as  much 
money  to  spare  as  we  did  when  we  lived  in  the  little  house 
in  Spring  Street.  What  with  new  furnishing  the  house,  and 
getting  everything  you  boys  and  girls  say  you  must  have, 
we  are  poorer,  if  anything,  than  we  were  then." 

"  Ma'am,  here  is  Mrs.  Ames's  girl  come  with  some  sew 
ing,"  said  the  servant. 

"  Show  her  in,"  said  Mrs.  Elmore. 

Ellen  entered  timidly,  and  handed  her  bundle  of  work  to 
Mrs.  Elmore,  who  forthwith  proceeded  to  a  minute  scrutiny 
of  the  articles,  for  she  prided  herself  on  being  very  particu- 


150  THE    SEAMSTKESS 

lar  as  to  her  sewing.  But,  though  the  work  had  been  ex 
ecuted  by  feeble  hands  and  aching  eyes,  even  Mrs.  Elmore 
could  detect  no  fault  in  it. 

"  Well,  it  is  very  prettily  done/'  said  she.  "  What  does 
your  mother  charge  ?  " 

Ellen  handed  a  neatly  folded  bill  which  she  had  drawn 
for  her  mother.  "  I  must  say,  I  think  your  mother's  prices 
are  very  high,"  said  Mrs.  Elmore,  examining  her  nearly 
empty  purse  ;  "  every  thing  is  getting  so  dear  that  one  hardly 
knows  how  to  live."  Ellen  looked  at  the  fancy  articles, 
and  glanced  around  the  room  with  an  air  of  innocent  as 
tonishment.  "  Ah,"  said  Mrs.  Elmore,  "  I  dare  say  it 
seems  to  you  as  if  persons  in  our  situation  had  no  need  of 
economy ;  but,  for  my  part,  I  feel  the  need  of  it  more  and 
more  every  day."  As  she  spoke  she  handed  Ellen  the  three 
dollars,  which,  though  it  was  not  a  quarter  the  price  of  one 
of  the  handkerchiefs,  was  all  that  she  and  her  sick  mother 
could  claim  in  the  world. 

"  There,"  said  she  ;  "  tell  your  mother  I  like  her  work 
very  much,  but  I  do  not  think  I  can  afford  to  employ  her, 
if  I  can  find  any  one  to  work  cheaper." 

Now,  Mrs.  Elmore  was  not  a  hard-hearted  woman,  and 
if  Ellen  had  come  as  a  beggar  to  solicit  help  for  her  sick 
mother,  Mrs.  Elmore  would  have  fitted  out  a  basket  of 
provisions,  and  sent  a  bottle  of  wine,  and  a  bundle  of  old 
clothes,  and  all  the  et  cetera  of  such  occasions ;  but  the 
sight  of  a  bill  always  aroused  all  the  instinctive  sharpness 
of  her  business-like  education.  She  never  had  the  dawning 
of  an  idea  that  it  was  her  duty  to  pay  anybody  any  more 
than  she  could  possibly  help ;  nay,  she  had  an  indistinct 
notion  that  it  was  her  duty  as  an  economist  to  make  every 
body  take  as  little  as  possible.  When  she  and  her  daugh 
ters  lived  in  Spring  Street,  to  which  she  had  alluded,  they 
used  to  spend  the  greater  part  of  their  time  at  home,  and 
the  family  sewing  was  commonly  done  among  themselves. 


THE   SEAMSTRESS  151 

But  since  they  had  moved  into  a  large  house,  and  set 
up  a  carriage,  and  addressed  themselves  to  being  genteel, 
the  girls  found  that  they  had  altogether  too  much  to  do 
to  attend  to  their  own  sewing,  much  less  to  perform  any  for 
their  father  and  brothers.  And  their  mother  found  her 
hands  abundantly  full  in  overlooking  her  large  house,  in 
taking  care  of  expensive  furniture,  and  in  superintending 
her  increased  train  of  servants.  The  sewing,  therefore,  was 
put  out  ;  and  Mrs.  Elmore  felt  it  a  duty  to  get  it  done  the 
cheapest  way  she  could.  Nevertheless,  Mrs.  Elmore  was 
too  notable  a  lady,  and  her  sons  and  daughters  were  alto 
gether  too  fastidious  as  to  the  make  and  quality  of  their 
clothing,  to  admit  the  idea  of  its  being  done  in  any  but  the 
most  complete  and  perfect  manner. 

Mrs.  Elmore  never  accused  herself  of  want  of  charity 
for  the  poor ;  but  she  had  never  considered  that  the  best 
class  of  the  poor  are  those  who  never  ask  charity.  She  did 
not  consider  that,  by  paying  liberally  those  who  were  hon 
estly  and  independently  struggling  for  themselves,  she  was 
really  doing  a  greater  charity  than  by  giving  indiscrimi 
nately  to  a  dozen  applicants. 

"  Don't  you  think,  mother,  she  says  we  charge  too  high 
for  this  work  !  "  said  Ellen,  when  she  returned.  "  I  am 
sure  she  did  not  know  how  much  work  we  put  in  those 
shirts.  She  says  she  cannot  give  us  any  more  work  ;  she 
must  look  out  for  somebody  that  will  do  it  cheaper.  I  do 
not  see  how  it  is  that  people  who  live  in  such  houses,  and 
have  so  many  beautiful  things,  can  feel  that  they  cannot 
afford  to  pay  for  what  costs  us  so  much." 

"  Well,  child,  they  are  more  apt  to  feel  so  than  people 
who  live  plainer." 

"Well,  I  am  sure,"  said  Ellen,  "we  cannot  afford  to 
spend  so  much  time  as  we  have  over  these  shirts  for  less 
money." 

"  Never  mind,  my  dear,"   said  the  mother  soothingly, 


152  THE   SEAMSTRESS 

"  here  is  a  bundle  of  work  that  another  lady  has  sent  in,  and 
if  we  get  it  done,  we  shall  have  enough  for  our  rent,  and 
something  over  to  buy  bread  with." 

It  is  needless  to  carry  our  readers  over  all  the  process  of 
cutting,  and  fitting,  and  gathering,  and  stitching,  necessary 
in  making  up  six  fine  shirts.  Suffice  it  to  say  that  on  Sat 
urday  evening  all  but  one  were  finished,  and  Ellen  proceeded 
to  carry  them  home,  promising  to  bring  the  remaining  one 
on  Tuesday  morning.  The  lady  examined  the  work,  and 
gave  Ellen  the  money ;  but  on  Tuesday,  when  the  child 
came  with  the  remaining  work,  she  found  her  in  great  ill 
humor.  Upon  reexamining  the  shirts,  she  had  discovered 
that  in  some  important  respects  they  differed  from  directions 
she  meant  to  have  given,  and  supposed  she  had  given  ;  and, 
accordingly,  she  vented  her  displeasure  on  Ellen. 

"Why  didn't  you  make  these  shirts  as  I  told  you  ?" 
said  she  sharply. 

"  We  did,"  said  Ellen  mildly  ;  "  mother  measured  by 
the  pattern  every  part,  and  cut  them  herself." 

"  Your  mother  must  be  a  fool,  then,  to  make  such  a  piece 
of  work.  I  wish  you  would  just  take  them  back  and  alter 
them  over  ;  "  and  the  lady  proceeded  with  the  directions, 
of  which  neither  Ellen  nor  her  mother  till  then  had  had  any 
intimation.  Unused  to  such  language,  the  frightened  Ellen 
took  up  her  work  and  slowly  walked  homeward. 

"  Oh,  dear,  how  my  head  does  ache  !  "  thought  she  to  her 
self  ;  u  and  poor  mother  !  she  said  this  morning  she  was 
afraid  another  of  her  sick  turns  was  coming  on,  and  we 
have  all  this  work  to  pull  out  and  do  over." 

"  See  here,  mother,"  said  she,  with  a  disconsolate  air,  as 
she  entered  the  room ;  "  Mrs.  Rudd  says,  take  out  all  the 
bosoms,  and  rip  off  all  the  collars,  and  fix  them  quite  an 
other  way.  She  says  they  are  not  like  the  pattern  she  sent ; 
but  she  must  have  forgotten,  for  here  it  is.  Look,  mother ; 
it  is  exactly  as  we  made  them." 


THE    SEAMSTRESS  153 

"  Well,  my  child,  carry  back  the  pattern,  and  show  her 
that  it  is  so." 

"  Indeed,  mother,  she  spoke  so  cross  to  me,  and  looked 
at  me  so,  that  I  do  not  feel  as  if  I  could  go  back." 

"  I  will  go  for  you,  then,"  said  the  kind  Maria  Stephens, 
who  had  been  sitting  with  Mrs.  Ames  while  Ellen  was  out. 
"  I  will  take  the  pattern  and  shirts,  and  tell  her  the  exact 
truth  about  it.  I  am  not  afraid  of  her."  Maria  Stephens 
was  a  tailoress,  who  rented  a  room  on  the  same  floor  with 
Mrs.  Ames,  a  cheerful,  resolute,  go-forward  little  body,  and 
ready  always  to  give  a  helping  hand  to  a  neighbor  in  trouble. 
So  she  took  the  pattern  and  shirts,  and  set  out  on  her 
mission. 

But  poor  Mrs.  Ames,  though  she  professed  to  take  a  right 
view  of  the  matter,  and  was  very  earnest  in  showing  Ellen 
why  she  ought  not  to  distress  herself  about  it,  still  felt  a 
shivering  sense  of  the  hardness  and  unkindness  of  the  world 
corning  over  her.  The  bitter  tears  would  spring  to  her 
eyes,  in  spite  of  every  effort  to  suppress  them,  as  she  sat 
mournfully  gazing  on  the  little  faded  miniature  before  men 
tioned.  "  When  he  was  alive,  I  never  knew  what  poverty 
or  trouble  was,"  was  the  thought  that  often  passed  through 
her  mind.  And  how  many  a  poor  forlorn  one  has  thought 
the  same  !  Poor  Mrs.  Ames  was  confined  to  her  bed  for 
most  of  that  week.  The  doctor  gave  absolute  directions 
that  she  should  do  nothing,  and  keep  entirely  quiet  —  a 
direction  very  sensible  indeed  in  the  chamber  of  ease  and 
competence,  but  hard  to  be  observed  in  poverty  and  want. 
What  pains  the  kind  and  dutiful  Ellen  took  that  week 
to  make  her  mother  feel  easy  !  How  often  she  replied  to 
her  anxious  questions,  that  she  was  quite  well,  or  that 
her  head  did  not  ache  much  !  and  by  various  other  evasive 
expedients  the  child  tried  to  persuade  herself  that  she  was 
speaking  the  truth.  And  during  the  times  her  mother 
slept,  in  the  day  or  evening,  she  accomplished  one  or  two 


154  THE   SEAMSTRESS 

pieces  of  plain  work,  with  the  price  of  which  she  expected 
to  surprise  her  mother.  It  was  towards  evening  when 
Ellen  took  her  finished  work  to  the  elegant  dwelling  of 
Mrs.  Page.  "  I  shall  get  a  dollar  for  this/7  said  she ; 
"  enough  to  pay  for  mother's  wine  and  medicine." 

"  This  work  is  done  very  neatly,"  said  Mrs.  Page,  "  and 
here  is  some  more  I  should  like  to  have  finished  in  the  same 
way." 

Ellen  looked  up  wistfully,  hoping  Mrs.  Page  was  going 
to  pay  her  for  the  last  work.  But  Mrs.  Page  was  only 
searching  a  drawer  for  a  pattern,  which  she  put  into  Ellen's 
hands,  and  after  explaining  how  she  wanted  her  work  done, 
dismissed  her  without  saying  a  word  about  the  expected 
dollar.  Poor  Ellen  tried  two  or  three  times,  as  she  was 
going  out,  to  turn  round  and  ask  for  it ;  hut  before  she  could 
decide  what  to  say,  she  found  herself  in  the  street.  Mrs. 
Page  was  an  amiable,  kind-hearted  woman,  but  one  who 
was  so  used  to  large  sums  of  money  that  she  did  not  realize 
how  great  an  affair  a  single  dollar  might  seem  to  other  per 
sons.  For  this  reason,  when  Ellen  had  worked  incessantly 
at  the  new  work  put  into  her  hands,  that  she  might  get  the 
money  for  all  together,  she  again  disappointed  her  in  the 
payment. 

"  I  '11  send  the  money  round  to-morrow,"  said  she,  when 
Ellen  at  last  found  courage  to  ask  for  it.  But  to-morrow 
came,  and  Ellen  was  forgotten ;  and  it  was  not  till  after  one 
or  two  applications  more  that  the  small  sum  was  paid. 

But  these  sketches  are  already  long  enough,  and  let  us  has 
ten  to  close  them.  Mrs.  Ames  found  liberal  friends,  who 
could  appreciate  and  honor  her  integrity  of  principle  and  loveli 
ness  of  character,  and  by  their  assistance  she  was  raised  to  see 
more  prosperous  days  ;  and  she,  and  the  delicate  Ellen,  and 
warm-hearted  Mary  were  enabled  to  have  a  home  and  fireside 
of  their  own,  and  to  enjoy  something  like  the  return  of  their 
former  prosperity.  We  have  given  these  sketches,  drawn 


THE   SEAMSTRESS  155 

from  real  life,  because  we  think  there  is  in  general  too  little 
consideration  on  the  part  of  those  who  give  employment  to 
those  in  situations  like  the  widow  here  described.  The 
giving  of  employment  is  a  very  important  branch  of  charity, 
inasmuch  as  it  assists  that  class  of  the  poor  who  are  the  most 
deserving.  It  should  be  looked  on  in  this  light,  and  the 
arrangements  of  a  family  be  so  made  that  a  suitable  com 
pensation  can  be  given,  and  prompt  and  cheerful  payment 
be  made,  without  the  dread  of  transgressing  the  rules  of 
economy.  It  is  better  to  teach  our  daughters  to  do  without 
expensive  ornaments  or  fashionable  elegances ;  better  even 
to  deny  ourselves  the  pleasure  of  large  donations  or  direct 
subscriptions  to  public  charities,  rather  than  to  curtail  the 
small  stipend  of  her  whose  "  candle  goeth  not  out  by  night,'7 
and  who  labors  with  her  needle  for  herself  and  the  helpless 
dear  ones  dependent  on  her  exertions. 


OLD   FATHER   MOEEIS 
A  SKETCH  FROM  NATURE 

OF  all  the  marvels  that  astonished  my  childhood,  there  is 
none  I  remember  to  this  day  with  so  much  interest  as  the  old 
man  whose  name  forms  my  caption.  When  I  knew  him  he 
was  an  aged  clergyman,  settled  over  an  obscure  village  in 
New  England.  He  had  enjoyed  the  'advantages  of  a  liberal 
education,  had  a  strong,  original  power  of  thought,  an  omni 
potent  imagination,  and  much  general  information;  but  so 
early  and  so  deeply  had  the  habits  and  associations  of  the 
plough,  the  farm,  and  country  life  wrought  themselves  into 
his  mind,  that  his  after  acquirements  could  only  mingle 
with  them,  forming  an  unexampled  amalgam  like  unto  no 
thing  but  itself.  He  was  an  ingrained  New  Englander,  and 
whatever  might  have  been  the  source  of  his  information, 
it  came  out  in  Yankee  form,  with  the  strong  provinciality 
of  Yankee  dialect.  It  is  in  vain  to  attempt  to  give  a  full 
picture  of  such  a  genuine  unique  ;  but  some  slight  and  im 
perfect  dashes  may  help  the  imagination  to  a  faint  idea  of 
what  none  can  fully  conceive  but  those  who  have  seen  and 
heard  old  Father  Morris. 

Suppose  yourself  one  of  half  a  dozen  children,  and  you 
hear  the  cry,  "  Father  Morris  is  coming  !  "  You  run  to  the 
window  or  door,  and  you  see  a  tall,  bulky  old  man,  with  a 
pair  of  saddlebags  on  one  arm,  hitching  his  old  horse  with 
a  fumbling  carefulness,  and  then  deliberately  stumping  to 
wards  the  house.  You  notice  his  tranquil,  florid,  full-moon 
face,  enlightened  by  a  pair  of  great  round  blue  eyes,  that 
roll  with  dreamy  inattentiveness  on  all  the  objects  around ; 


OLD   FATHER   MORRIS  157 

and  as  he  takes  off  his  hat,  you  see  the  white  curling  wig 
that  sets  off  his  round  head.  He  comes  towards  you,  and 
as  you  stand  staring,  with  all  the  children  around,  he  de 
liberately  puts  his  great  hand  on  your  head,  and,  with  deep, 
rumbling  voice,  inquires,  — 

"  How  d'  ye  do,  my  darter  ?  is  your  daddy  at  home  ?  " 
"  My  darter "  usually  makes  off  as  fast  as  possible,  in  an 
unconquerable  giggle.  Father  Morris  goes  into  the  house, 
and  we  watch  him  at  every  turn,  as,  with  the  most  liberal 
simplicity,  he  makes  himself  at  home,  takes  off  his  wig, 
wipes  down  his  great  face  with  a  checked  pocket-handker 
chief,  helps  himself  hither  and  thither  to  whatever  he  wants, 
and  asks  for  such  things  as  he  cannot  lay  his  hands  on, 
with  all  the  comfortable  easiness  of  childhood.  I  remember 
to  this  day  how  we  used  to  peep  through  the  crack  of  the 
door,  or  hold  it  half  ajar  and  peer  in,  to  watch  his  motions ; 
and  how  mightily  diverted  we  were  with  his  deep,  slow 
manner  of  speaking,  his  heavy,  cumbrous  walk,  but,  above 
all,  with  the  wonderful  faculty  of  "hemming"  which  he 
possessed.  His  deep,  thundering,  protracted  "A-hem-em" 
was  like  nothing  else  that  ever  I  heard  ;  and  when  once, 
as  he  was  in  the  midst  of  one  of  these  performances,  the 
parlor  door  suddenly  happened  to  swing  open,  I  heard 
one  of  my  roguish  brothers  calling,  in  a  suppressed  tone, 
"  Charles  !  Charles  !  Father  Morris  has  hemmed  the  door 
open  !  "  —  and  then  followed  the  signs  of  a  long  and  des 
perate  titter,  in  which  I  sincerely  sympathized. 

But  the  morrow  is  Sunday.  The  old  man  rises  in  the 
pulpit.  He  is  not  now  in  his  own  humble  little  parish, 
preaching  simply  to  the  hoers  of  corn  and  planters  of  pota 
toes,  but  there  sits  Governor  D.,  and  there  is  Judge  E,.,  and 
Counselor  P.,  and  Judge  G.  In  short,  he  is  before  a  re 
fined  and  literary  audience.  But  Father  Morris  rises  :  he 
thinks  nothing  of  this  ;  he  cares  nothing  ;  he  knows  nothing, 
as  he  himself  would  say,  but  "  Jesus  Christ,  and  him  cru- 


158  OLD   FATHER   MORRIS 

cified."  He  takes  a  passage  of  Scripture  to  explain ;  per 
haps  it  is  the  walk  to  Emmaus,  and  the  conversation  of  Jesus 
with  his  disciples.  Immediately  the  whole  start  out  before 
you,  living  and  picturesque  :  the  road  to  Emmaus  is  a  New 
England  turnpike  ;  you  can  see  its  milestones,  its  mullein 
stalks,  its  tollgates.  Next  the  disciples  rise,  and  you  have 
before  you  all  their  anguish,  and  hesitation,  and  dismay 
talked  out  to  you  in  the  language  of  your  own  fireside. 
You  smile ;  you  are  amused ;  yet  you  are  touched,  and  the 
illusion  grows  every  moment.  You  see  the  approaching 
stranger,  and  the  mysterious  conversation  grows  more  and 
more  interesting.  Emmaus  rises  in  the  distance,  in  the  like 
ness  of  a  New  England  village,  with  a  white  meeting-house 
and  spire.  You  follow  the  travelers  ;  you  enter  the  house 
with  them ;  nor  do  you  wake  from  your  trance  until,  with 
streaming  eyes,  the  preacher  tells  you  that  "  they  saw  it  was 
the  Lord  Jesus  — and  what  a  pity  it  was  they  could  not  have 
known  it  before  !  " 

It  was  after  a  sermon  on  this  very  chapter  of  Scripture 
history  that  Governor  Griswold,  in  passing  out  of  the  house, 
laid  hold  on  the  sleeve  of  his  first  acquaintance  :  "  Pray  tell 
me,"  said  he,  "who  is  this  minister  ?  " 

"Why,  it  is  old  Father  Morris." 

"  Well,  he  is  an  oddity  —  and  a  genius  too,  I  declare !  " 
he  continued.  "  I  have  been  wondering  all  the  morning 
how  I  could  have  read  the  Bible  to  so  little  purpose  as  not 
to  see  all  these  particulars  he  has  presented." 

I  once  heard  him  narrate  in  this  picturesque  way  the  story 
of  Lazarus.  The  great  bustling  city  of  Jerusalem  first  rises 
to  view,  and  you  are  told  with  great  simplicity,  how  the 
Lord  Jesus  "  used  to  get  tired  of  the  noise ;  "  and  how  he 
was  "  tired  of  preaching,  again  and  again,  to  people  who 
would  not  mind  a  word  he  said ;  "  and  how  "  when  it  came 
evening,  he  used  to  go  out  and  see  his  friends  in  Bethany." 
Then  he  told  about  the  house  of  Martha  and  Mary :  "  a 


OLD  FATHER  MORRIS  159 

little  white  house  among  the  trees,"  he  said ;  "  you  could 
just  see  it  from  Jerusalem."  And  there  the  Lord  Jesus 
and  his  disciples  used  to  go  and  sit  in  the  evenings,  with 
Martha,  and  Mary,  and  Lazarus.  Then  the  narrator  went 
on  to  tell  how  Lazarus  died,  describing,  with  tears  and  a 
choking  voice,  the  distress  they  were  in,  and  how  they  sent 
a  message  to  the  Lord  Jesus  and  he  did  not  come,  and  how 
they  wondered  and  wondered ;  and  thus  on  he  went,  wind 
ing  up  the  interest  by  the  graphic  minutia3  of  an  eye 
witness,  till  he  woke  you  from  the  dream  by  his  triumphant 
joy  at  the  resurrection  scene. 

On  another  occasion,  as  he  was  sitting  at  a  tea-table,  un 
usually  supplied  with  cakes  and  sweetmeats,  he  found  an 
opportunity  to  make  a  practical  allusion  to  the  same  family 
story.  He  said  that  Mary  was  quiet  and  humble,  sitting 
at  her  Saviour's  feet  to  hear  his  words  ;  but  Martha  thought 
more  of  what  was  to  be  got  for  tea.  Martha  could  not  find 
time  to  listen  to  Christ.  No  ;  she  was  "  '  cumbered  with 
much  serving '  —  around  the  house,  frying  fritters  and  mak 
ing  gingerbread." 

Among  his  own  simple  people,  his  style  of  Scripture- 
painting  was  listened  to  with  breathless  interest.  But  it 
was  particularly  in  those  rustic  circles,  called  "  conference 
meetings,"  that  his  whole  warm  soul  unfolded,  and  the 
Bible  in  his  hands  became  a  gallery  of  New  England  paint 
ings.  He  particularly  loved  the  evangelists,  following  the 
footsteps  of  Jesus  Christ,  dwelling  upon  his  words,  repeat 
ing  over  and  over  again  the  stories  of  what  he  did,  with  all 
the  fond  veneration  of  an  old  and  favored  servant.  Some 
times,  too,  he  would  give  the  narration  an  exceedingly  prac 
tical  turn,  as  one  example  will  illustrate.  He  had  noticed 
a  falling  off  in  his  little  circle  that  met  for  social  prayer, 
and  took  occasion,  the  first  time  he  collected  a  tolerable 
audience,  to  tell  concerning  "  the  conference  meeting  that 
the  disciples  attended  "  after  the  resurrection. 


160  OLD   FATHER  MORRIS 

"  But  Thomas  was  not  with  them."  "  Thomas  not  with 
them !  "  said  the  old  man,  in  a  sorrowful  voice.  "  Why, 
what  could  keep  Thomas  away  ?  Perhaps,"  said  he,  glan 
cing  at  some  of  his  backward  auditors,  "  Thomas  had  got 
cold-hearted,  and  was  afraid  they  would  ask  him  to  make 
the  first  prayer  ;  or  perhaps,"  said  he,  looking  at  some  of 
the  farmers,  "  Thomas  was  afraid  the  roads  were  bad  ;  or 
perhaps,"  he  added  after  a  pause,  "  Thomas  had  got  proud, 
and  thought  he  could  not  come  in  his  old  clothes."  Thus 
he  went  on,  significantly  summing  up  the  common  excuses 
of  his  people ;  and  then  with  great  simplicity  and  emotion 
he  added,  "  But  only  think  what  Thomas  lost,  for  in  the 
middle  of  the  meeting,  the  Lord  Jesus  came  and  stood 
among  them !  How  sorry  Thomas  must  have  been ! " 
This  representation  served  to  fill  the  vacant  seats  for  some 
time  to  come. 

At  another  time  Father  Morris  gave  the  details  of  the 
anointing  of  David  to  be  king.  He  told  them  how  Samuel 
went  to  Bethlehem,  to  Jesse's  house,  and  went  in  with  a 
"  How  d'  ye  do,  Jesse  ?  "  and  how,  when  Jesse  asked  him 
to  take  a  chair,  he  said  he  could  not  stay  a  minute  ;  that 
the  Lord  had  sent  him  to  anoint  one  of  his  sons  for  a  king ; 
and  how,  when  Jesse  called  in  the  tallest  and  handsomest, 
Samuel  said  "he  would  not  do;"  and  how  all  the  rest 
passed  the  same  test ;  and  at  last  how  Samuel  says,  "  Why, 
have  not  you  any  more  sons,  Jesse  ?  "  and  Jesse  says, 
"Why,  yes,  there  is  little  David,  down  in  the  lot;"  and 
how,  as  soon  as  ever  Samuel  saw  David,  "  he  slashed  the 
oil  right  on  to  him  ;  "  and  how  Jesse  said  "  he  never  was 
so  beat  in  all  his  life." 

Father  Morris  sometimes  used  his  illustrative  talent  to 
very  good  purpose  in  the  way  of  rebuke.  He  had  on  his 
farm  a  fine  orchard  of  peaches,  from  which  some  of  the  ten 
and  twelve-year-old  gentlemen  helped  themselves  more  lib 
erally  than  even  the  old  man's  kindness  thought  expedient. 


OLD   FATHER  MORRIS  161 

Accordingly,  he  took  occasion  to  introduce  into  his  sermon 
one  Sunday,  in  his  little  parish,  an  account  of  a  journey  he 
took  ;  and  how  he  was  "  very  warm  and  very  dry  ;  "  and 
how  he  saw  a  fine  orchard  of  peaches  that  made  his  mouth 
water  to  look  at  them.  "  So/7  says  he,  "I  came  up  to  the 
fence  and  looked  all  around,  for  I  would  not  have  touched 
one  of  them  without  leave  for  all  the  world.  At  last  I 
spied  a  man,  and  says  I,  i  Mister,  won't  you  give  me  some 
of  your  peaches  ? '  So  the  man  came  and  gave  me  nigh 
about  a  hatful.  And  while  I  stood  there  eating,  I  said, 
'  Mister,  how  do  you  manage  to  keep  your  peaches  ? ' 
'  Keep  them !  '  said  he,  and  he  stared  at  me  ;  '  what  do 
you  mean  ?  '  '  Yes,  sir,'  said  I ;  '  don't  the  boys  steal 
them  ?  '  '  Boys  steal  them  !  '  said  he.  '  No,  indeed  ! ' 
'  Why,  sir,'  said  I,  '  I  have  a  whole  lot  full  of  peaches, 
and  I  cannot  get  half  of  them'" — here  the  old  man's  voice 
grew  tremulous  —  "  ( because  the  boys  in  my  parish  steal 
them  so.'  '  Why,  sir,'  said  he,  '  don't  their  parents  teach 
them  not  to  steal  ?  '  And  I  grew  all  over  in  a  cold  sweat, 
and  I  told  him  '  I  was  afeard  they  did  n't.'  '  Why,  how 
you  talk  !  '  says  the  man ;  <  do  tell  me  where  you  live  ? ? 
Then,"  said  Father  Morris,  the  tears  running  over,  "  I  was 
obliged  to  tell  him  I  lived  in  the  town  of  G."  After  this 
Father  Morris  kept  his  peaches. 

Our  old  friend  was  not  less  original  in  the  logical  than 
in  the  illustrative  portions  of  his  discourses.  His  logic  was 
of  that  familiar,  colloquial  kind  which  shakes  hands  with 
common  sense  like  an  old  friend.  Sometimes,  too,  his  great 
mind  and  great  heart  would  be  poured  out  on  the  vast 
themes  of  religion  in  language  which,  though  homely,  pro 
duced  all  the  effects  of  the  sublime.  He  once  preached  a 
discourse  on  the  text,  "  the  High  and  Holy  One  that  inhab- 
iteth  eternity  ;  "  and  from  the  beginning  to  the  end  it  was 
a  train  of  lofty  and  solemn  thought.  With  his  usual  sim 
ple  earnestness,  and  his  great,  rolling  voice,  he  told  about 


162  OLD  FATHER  MORRIS 

"  the  Great  God,  —  the  Great  Jehovah,  —  and  how  the  peo 
ple  in  this  world  were  flustering  and  worrying,  and  afraid 
they  should  not  get  time  to  do  this,  and  that,  and  t'  other. 
But,"  he  added  with  full-hearted  satisfaction,  "the  Lord 
is  never  in  a  hurry ;  he  has  it  all  to  do,  but  he  has  time 
enough,  for  he  inhabiteth  eternity."  And  the  grand  idea  of 
infinite  leisure  and  almighty  resources  was  carried  through 
the  sermon  with  equal  strength  and  simplicity. 

Although  the  old  man  never  seemed  to  be  sensible  of  any 
thing  tending  to  the  ludicrous  in  his  own  mode  of  express 
ing  himself,  yet  he  had  considerable  relish  for  humor,  and 
some  shrewdness  of  repartee.  One  time,  as  he  was  walking 
through  a  neighboring  parish  famous  for  its  profanity,  he 
was  stopped  by  a  whole  flock  of  the  youthful  reprobates  of 
the  place  :  — 

"  Father  Morris,  Father  Morris  !   the  devil's  dead  !  " 

"  Is  he  ?  "  said  the  old  man,  benignly  laying  his  hand  on 
the  head  of  the  nearest  urchin ;  "  you  poor  fatherless  chil 
dren  !  " 

But  the  sayings  and  doings  of  this  good  old  man,  as  re 
ported  in  the  legends  of  the  neighborhood,  are  more  than 
can  be  gathered  or  reported.  He  lived  far  beyond  the  com 
mon  age  of  man,  and  continued,  when  age  had  impaired  his 
powers,  to  tell  over  and  over  again  the  same  Bible  stories 
that  he  had  told  so  often  before.  I  recollect  hearing  of  the 
joy  that  almost  broke  the  old  man's  heart  when,  after  many 
years'  diligent  watching  and  nurture  of  the  good  seed  in  his 
parish,  it  began  to  spring  into  vegetation,  sudden  and  beau 
tiful  as  that  which  answers  the  patient  watching  of  the  hus 
bandman.  Many  a  hard,  worldly-hearted  man  —  many  a 
sleepy,  inattentive  hearer,  many  a  listless,  idle  young  per 
son  —  began  to  give  ear  to  words  that  had  long  fallen  un 
heeded.  A  neighboring  minister,  who  had  been  sent  for  to 
see  and  rejoice  in  these  results,  describes  the  scene  when, 
on  entering  the  little  church,  he  found  an  anxious,  crowded 


OLD  FATHER   MORRIS  163 

auditory  assembled  around  their  venerable  teacher,  waiting 
for  direction  and  instruction.  The  old  man  was  sitting  in 
his  pulpit,  almost  choking  with  fullness  of  emotion  as  he 
gazed  around.  "  Father,"  said  the  youthful  minister,  "  I 
suppose  you  are  ready  to  say  with  old  Simeon, '  Now,  Lord, 
lettest  thou  thy  servant  depart  in  peace,  for  my  eyes  have 
seen  thy  salvation.'  J:l  "  Sartin,  sartin,"  said  the  old  man, 
while  the  tears  streamed  down  his  cheeks,  and  his  whole 
frame  shook  with  emotion. 

It  was  not  many  years  after  that  this  simple  and  loving 
servant  of  Christ  was  gathered  in  peace  unto  Him  whom  he 
loved.  His  name  is  fast  passing  from  remembrance,  and 
in  a  few  years  his  memory,  like  his  humble  grave,  will  be 
entirely  grown  over  and  forgotten  among  men,  though  it 
will  be  had  in  everlasting  remembrance  by  Him  who  "  for- 
getteth  not  his  servants,"  and  in  whose  sight  the  death  of 
his  saints  is  precious. 


THE   CORAL   RING 

"  THERE  is  no  time  of  life  in  which  young  girls  are  so 
thoroughly  selfish  as  from  fifteen  to  twenty,"  said  Edward 
Ashton  deliberately,  as  he  laid  down  a  book  he  had  been 
reading,  and  leaned  over  the  centre  table. 

"  You  insulting  fellow  !  "  replied  a  tall,  brilliant-looking 
creature,  who  was  lounging  on  an  ottoman  hard  by,  over 
one  of  Dickens's  last  works. 

"  Truth,  coz,  for  all  that,"  said  the  gentleman,  with  the 
air  of  one  who  means  to  provoke  a  discussion. 

"  Now,  Edward,  this  is  just  one  of  your  wholesale  decla 
rations,  for  nothing  only  to  get  me  into  a  dispute  with  you, 
you  know,"  replied  the  lady.  "  On  your  conscience,  now 
(if  you  have  one),  is  it  not  so  ?  " 

"  My  conscience  feels  quite  easy,  cousin,  in  subscribing 
to  that  sentiment  as  my  confession  of  faith,"  replied  the 
gentleman,  with  provoking  sang  froid. 

u  Pshaw  !  it  ?s  one  of  your  fusty  old  bachelor  notions. 
See  what  comes,  now,  of  your  living  to  your  time  of  life 
without  a  wife,  —  disrespect  for  the  sex,  and  all  that. 
Really,  cousin,  your  symptoms  are  getting  alarming." 

"  Nay,  now,  Cousin  Florence,"  said  Edward,  "  you  are  a 
girl  of  moderately  good  sense,  with  all  your  nonsense.  Now 
don't  you  (I  know  you  do)  think  just  so,  too  ?  " 

"  Think  just  so,  too  !  —  do  you  hear  the  creature  ?  "  re 
plied  Florence.  "  No,  sir ;  you  can  speak  for  yourself  in 
this  matter,  but  I  beg  leave  to  enter  my  protest  when  you 
speak  for  me,  too." 

"  Well,  now,  where  is  there,  coz,  among  all  our  circle,  a 


THE   CORAL   RING  165 

young  girl  that  has  any  sort  of  purpose  or  object  in  life,  to 
speak  of,  except  to  make  herself  as  interesting  and  agreeable 
as  possible  ?  to  be  admired,  and  to  pass  her  time  in  as  amus 
ing  a  way  as  she  can  ?  Where  will  you  find  one  between 
fifteen  and  twenty  that  has  any  serious  regard  for  the  im 
provement  and  best  welfare  of  those  with  whom  she  is  con 
nected  at  all,  or  that  modifies  her  conduct  in  the  least  with 
reference  to  it  ?  Now,  cousin,  in  very  serious  earnest,  you 
have  about  as  much  real  character,  as  much  earnestness 
and  depth  of  feeling,  and  as  much  good  sense,  when  one 
can  get  at  it,  as  any  young  lady  of  them  all ;  and  yet,  on 
your  conscience,  can  you  say  that  you  live  with  any  sort  of 
reference  to  anybody's  good,  or  to  anything  but  your  own 
amusement  and  gratification  ?  " 

"  What  a  shocking  adjuration  !  "  replied  the  lady,  "  pre 
faced,  too,  by  a  three-story  compliment.  Well,  being  so 
adjured,  I  must  think  to  the  best  of  my  ability.  And  now, 
seriously  and  soberly,  I  don't  see  as  I  am  selfish.  I  do  all 
that  I  have  any  occasion  to  do  for  anybody.  You  know 
that  we  have  servants  to  do  everything  that  is  necessary 
about  the  house,  so  that  there  is  no  occasion  for  my  mak 
ing  any  display  of  housewifery  excellence.  And  I  wait  on 
mamma  if  she  has  a  headache,  and  hand  papa  his  slippers 
and  newspaper,  and  find  Uncle  John's  spectacles  for  him 
twenty  times  a  day  (no  small  matter  that),  and  then  "  — 

"  But,  after  all,  what  is  the  object  and  purpose  of  your 
life  ?  " 

"Why,  I  haven't  any.  I  don't  see  how  I  can  have  any, 
—  that  is,  as  I  am  made.  Now,  you  know,  I  've  none  of 
the  fussing,  baby-tending,  herb-tea-making  recommendations 
of  Aunt  Sally,  and  divers  others  of  the  class  commonly 
called  useful.  Indeed,  to  tell  the  truth,  I  think  useful  per 
sons  are  commonly  rather  fussy  and  stupid.  They  are  just 
like  the  boneset,  and  hoarhound,  and  catnip,  —  very  necessary 
to  be  raised  in  a  garden,  but  not  in  the  least  ornamental." 


166  THE   CORAL  RING 

"  And  you  charming  young  ladies,  who  philosophize  in 
kid  slippers  and  French  dresses,  are  the  tulips  and  roses,  — 
very  charming,  and  delightful,  and  sweet,  but  fit  for  nothing 
on  earth  but  parlor  ornaments." 

"  Well,  parlor  ornaments  are  good  in  their  way,"  said  the 
young  lady,  coloring,  and  looking  a  little  vexed. 

"  So  you  give  up  the  point,  then,"  said  the  gentleman, 
"that  you  girls  are  good  for — just  to  amuse  yourselves, 
amuse  others,  look  pretty,  and  be  agreeable  ?  " 

"  Well,  and  if  we  behave  well  to  our  parents,  and  are 
amiable  in  the  family  —  I  don't  know ;  —  and  yet,"  said 
Florence,  sighing,  "  I  have  often  had  a  sort  of  vague  idea  of 
something  higher  that  we  might  become ;  yet,  really,  what 
more  than  this  is  expected  of  us  ?  what  else  can  we  do  ?  " 

"  I  used  to  read  in  old-fashioned  novels  about  ladies  visit 
ing  the  sick  and  the  poor,"  replied  Edward.  "  You  remem 
ber  <  Calebs  in  Search  of  a  Wife'  ?  " 

"  Yes,  truly ;  that  is  to  say,  I  remember  the  story  part  of 
it,  and  the  love  scenes ;  but  as  for  all  those  everlasting  con 
versations  of  Dr.  Barlow,  Mr.  Stanley,  and  nobody  knows 
who  else,  I  skipped  those,  of  course.  But  really,  this  visit 
ing  and  tending  the  poor,  and  all  that,  seems  very  well  in  a 
story,  where  the  lady  goes  into  a  picturesque  cottage,  half 
overgrown  with  honeysuckle,  and  finds  an  emaciated  but 
still  beautiful  woman  propped  up  by  pillows.  But  come  to 
the  downright  matter  of  fact  of  poking  about  in  all  these 
vile,  dirty  alleys,  and  entering  little  dark  rooms,  amid  troops 
of  grinning  children,  and  smelling  codfish  and  onions,  and 
nobody  knows  what,  —  dear  me,  my  benevolence  always 
evaporates  before  I  get  through.  I  'd  rather  pay  anybody 
five  dollars  a  day  to  do  it  for  me  than  do  it  myself.  The 
fact  is,  that  I  have  neither  fancy  nor  nerves  for  this  kind  of 
thing." 

"  Well,  granting,  then,  that  you  can  do  nothing  for  your 
fellow-creatures  unless  you  are  to  do  it  in  the  most  genteel, 


THE   CORAL  RING  167 

comfortable,  and  picturesque  manner  possible,  is  there  not  a 
great  field  for  a  woman  like  you,  Florence,  in  your  influence 
over  your  associates  ?  With  your  talents  for  conversation, 
your  tact  and  self-possession,  and  ladylike  gift  of  saying 
anything  you  choose,  are  you  not  responsible,  in  some  wise, 
for  the  influence  you  exert  over  those  by  whom  you  are  sur 
rounded  ?  " 

"  I  never  thought  of  that,"  replied  Florence. 

"  Now,  you  remember  the  remarks  that  Mr.  Fortesque 
made  the  other  evening  on  the  religious  services  at  church  ?  " 

"  Yes,  I  do ;  and  I  thought  then  he  was  too  bad." 

"  And  I  do  not  suppose  there  was  one  of  you  ladies  in 
the  room  that  did  not  think  so,  too  ;  but  yet  the  matter  was 
all  passed  over  with  smiles,  and  with  not  a  single  insinuation 
that  he  had  said  anything  unpleasing  or  disagreeable." 

"  Well,  what  could  we  do  ?  One  does  not  want  to  be 
rude,  you  know." 

"  Do !  Could  you  not,  Florence,  —  you  who  have  always 
taken  the  lead  in  society,  and  who  have  been  noted  for 
always  being  able  to  say  and  do  what  you  please,  —  could 
you  not  have  shown  him  that  those  remarks  were  unpleasing 
to  you,  as  decidedly  as  you  certainly  would  have  done  if 
they  had  related  to  the  character  of  your  father  or  brother  ? 
To  my  mind,  a  woman  of  true  moral  feeling  should  consider 
herself  as  much  insulted  when  her  religion  is  treated  with 
contempt  as  if  the  contempt  were  shown  to  herself.  Do  you 
not  know  the  power  which  is  given  to  you  women  to  awe 
and  restrain  us  in  your  presence,  and  to  guard  the  sacredness 
of  things  which  you  treat  as  holy  ?  Believe  me,  Florence, 
that  Fortesque,  infidel  as  he  is,  would  reverence  a  woman 
with  whom  he  dared  not  trifle  on  sacred  subjects." 

Florence  rose  from  her  seat  with  a  heightened  color,  her 
dark  eyes  brightening  through  tears. 

"  I  am  sure  what  you  say  is  just,  cousin,  and  yet  I  have 
never  thought  of  it  before.  I  will  —  I  am  determined  to 


168  THE   CORAL  RING 

begin,  after  this,  to  live  with  some  better  purpose  than  I 
have  done." 

"  And  let  me  tell  you,  Florence,  in  starting  a  new  course, 
as  in  learning  to  walk,  taking  the  first  step  is  everything. 
Now,  I  have  a  first  step  to  propose  to  you." 

"  Well,  cousin  "  — 

"  Well,  you  know,  I  suppose,  that  among  your  train  of 
adorers  you  number  Colonel  Elliot  ?  " 

Florence  smiled. 

"  And  perhaps  you  do  not  know,  what  is  certainly  true, 
that,  among  the  most  discerning  and  cool  part  of  his  friends, 
Elliot  is  considered  as  a  lost  man." 

"  Good  heavens  !  Edward,  what  do  you  mean  ?  " 

"  Simply  this  :  that,  with  all  his  brilliant  talents,  his 
amiable  and  generous  feelings,  and  his  success  in  society, 
Elliot  has  not  self-control  enough  to  prevent  his  becoming 
confirmed  in  intemperate  habits." 

"  I  never  dreamed  of  this,"  replied  Florence.  "  I  knew 
that  he  was  spirited  and  free,  fond  of  society,  and  excitable ; 
but  never  suspected  anything  beyond." 

"  Elliot  has  tact  enough  never  to  appear  in  ladies'  society 
when  he  is  not  in  a  fit  state  for  it,"  replied  Edward ;  "  but 
yet  it  is  so." 

"  But  is  he  really  so  bad  ?  " 

"  He  stands  just  on  the  verge,  Florence ;  just  where  a 
word  fitly  spoken  might  turn  him.  He  is  a  noble  creature, 
full  of  all  sorts  of  fine  impulses  and  feelings ;  the  only  son 
of  a  mother  who  dotes  on  him,  the  idolized  brother  of  sisters 
who  love  him  as  you  love  your  brother,  Florence  ;  and  he 
stands  where  a  word,  a  look,  —  so  they  be  of  the  right  kind, 
—  might  save  him." 

"  And  why,  then,  do  you  not  speak  to  him  ? "  said 
Florence. 

"  Because  I  am  not  the  best  person,  Florence.  There  is 
another  who  can  do  it  better ;  one  whom  he  admires,  who 


THE   CORAL   RING  169 

stands  in  a  position  which  would  forbid  his  feeling  angry  ; 
a  person,  cousin,  whom  I  have  heard  in  gayer  moments  say 
that  she  knew  how  to  say  anything  she  pleased  without 
offending  anybody." 

"  Oh,  Edward  !  "  said  Florence  coloring  ;  "  do  not  bring 
up  my  foolish  speeches  against  me,  and  do  not  speak  as  if 
I  ought  to  interfere  in  this  matter,  for  indeed  I  cannot  do 
it.  I  never  could  in  the  world,  I  am  certain  I  could  not." 

"And  so,"  said  Edward,  "you,  whom  I  have  heard  say 
so  many  things  which  no  one  else  could  say,  or  dared  to 
say,  —  you,  who  have  gone  on  with  your  laughing  assurance 
in  your  own  powers  of  pleasing,  —  shrink  from  trying  that 
power  when  a  noble  and  generous  heart  might  be  saved  by 
it.  You  have  been  willing  to  venture  a  great  deal  for  the 
sake  of  amusing  yourself  and  winning  admiration,  but  you 
dare  not  say  a  word  for  any  high  or  noble  purpose.  Do 
you  not  see  how  you  confirm  what  I  said  of  the  selfishness 
of  you  women?" 

"  But  you  must  remember,  Edward,  this  is  a  matter  of 
great  delicacy." 

"  That  word  '  delicacy  ?  is  a  charming  cover- all  in  all  these 
cases,  Florence.  Now,  here  is  a  fine,  noble-spirited  young 
man,  away  from  his  mother  and  sisters,  away  from  any 
family  friend  who  might  care  for  him,  tempted,  betrayed, 
almost  to  ruin,  and  a  few  words  from  you,  said  as  a  woman 
knows  how  to  say  them,  might  be  his  salvation.  But  you 
will  coldly  look  on  and  see  him  go  to  destruction,  because 
you  have  too  much  delicacy  to  make  the  effort,  —  like  the 
man  that  would  not  help  his  neighbor  out  of  the  water  be 
cause  he  had  never  had  the  honor  of  an  introduction." 

"  But,  Edward,  consider  how  peculiarly  fastidious  Elliot 
is,  —  how  jealous  of  any  attempt  to  restrain  and  guide  him." 

"And  just  for  that  reason  it  is  that  men  of  his  acquaintance 
cannot  do  anything  with  him.  But  what  are  you  women 
made  with  so  much  tact  and  power  of  charming  for,  if  it  is 


170  THE   CORAL   RING 

not  to  do  these  very  things  that  we  cannot  do  ?  It  is  a  deli 
cate  matter  —  true ;  and  has  not  Heaven  given  to  you  a  fine 
touch  and  a  fine  eye  for  just  such  delicate  matters  ?  Have 
you  not  seen,  a  thousand  times,  that  what  might  be  resented 
as  an  impertinent  interference  on  the  part  of  a  man,  comes 
to  us  as  a  flattering  expression  of  interest  from  the  lips  of  a 
woman  ?  " 

"  Well,  but,  cousin,  what  would  you  have  me  do  ?  How 
would  you  have  me  do  it  ?  "  said  Florence  earnestly. 

"  You  know  that  Fashion,  which  makes  so  many  wrong 
turns  and  so  many  absurd  ones,  has  at  last  made  one  good 
one,  and  it  is  now  a  fashionable  thing  to  sign  the  temper 
ance  pledge.  Elliot  himself  would  be  glad  to  do  it,  but  he 
foolishly  committed  himself  against  it  in  the  outset,  and 
now  feels  bound  to  stand  to  his  opinion.  He  has,  too,  been 
rather  rudely  assailed  by  some  of  the  apostles  of  the  new 
state  of  things,  who  did  not  understand  the  peculiar  points 
of  his  character ;  in  short,  I  am  afraid  that  he  will  feel 
bound  to  go  to  destruction  for  the  sake  of  supporting  his 
own  opinion.  Now,  if  I  should  undertake  with  him,  he 
might  shoot  me  ;  but  I  hardly  think  there  is  anything  of 
the  sort  to  be  apprehended  in  your  case.  Just  try  your  en 
chantments  :  you  have  bewitched  wise  men  into  doing  fool 
ish  things  before  now  ;  try,  now,  if  you  can't  bewitch  a 
foolish  man  into  doing  a  wise  thing." 

Florence  smiled  archly,  but  instantly  grew  more  thought 
ful. 

"  Well,  cousin,"  she  said,  "  I  will  try.  Though  you 
are  liberal  in  your  ascriptions  of  power,  yet  I  can  put  the 
matter  to  the  test  of  experiment." 

Florence  Elmore  was,  at  the  time  we  speak  of,  in  her 
twentieth  year.  Born  of  one  of  the  wealthiest  families  in 

?  highly  educated  and  accomplished,  idolized  by  her 

parents  and  brothers,  she  had  entered  the  world  as  one  born 


THE   CORAL  RING  171 

to  command.  With  much  native  nobleness  and  magnanim 
ity  of  character,  with  warm  and  impulsive  feelings,  and  a 
capability  of  everything  high  or  great,  she  had  hitherto 
lived  solely  for  her  own  amusement,  and  looked  on  the 
whole  brilliant  circle  by  which  she  was  surrounded,  with  all 
its  various  actors,  as  something  got  up  for  her  special  diver 
sion.  The  idea  of  influencing  any  one,  for  better  or  worse, 
by  anything  she  ever  said  or  did,  had  never  occurred  to  her. 
The  crowd  of  admirers  of  the  other  sex  who,  as  a  matter 
of  course,  were  always  about  her,  she  regarded  as  so  many 
sources  of  diversion ;  but  the  idea  of  feeling  any  sympathy 
with  them  as  human  beings,  or  of  making  use  of  her  power 
over  them  for  their  improvement,  was  one  that  had  never 
entered  her  head. 

Edward  Ashton  was  an  old  bachelor  cousin  of  Florence's, 
who,  having  earned  the  title  of  oddity  in  general  society, 
availed  himself  of  it  to  exercise  a  turn  for  telling  the  truth 
to  the  various  young  ladies  of  his  acquaintance,  especially 
to  his  fair  cousin  Florence.  We  remark,  by  the  bye,  that 
these  privileged  truth-tellers  are  quite  a  necessary  of  life  to 
young  ladies  in  the  full  tide  of  society,  and  we  really  think 
it  would  be  worth  while  for  every  dozen  of  them  to  unite 
to  keep  a  person  of  this  kind  on  a  salary  for  the  benefit  of 
the  whole.  However,  that  is  nothing  to  our  present  pur 
pose  ;  we  must  return  to  our  fair  heroine,  whom  we  left,  at 
the  close  of  the  last  conversation,  standing  in  deep  revery 
by  the  window. 

"  It 's  more  than  half  true,'7  she  said  to  herself,  —  "  more 
than  half.  Here  am  I,  twenty  years  old,  and  never  have 
thought  of  anything,  never  done  anything,  except  to  amuse 
and  gratify  myself  ;  no  purpose,  no  object ;  nothing  high, 
nothing  dignified,  nothing  worth  living  for  !  Only  a  parlor 
ornament  —  heigh-ho  !  Well,  I  really  do  believe  I  could  do 
something  with  this  Elliot ;  and  yet  how  dare  I  try  ?  " 

Now,  my  good  readers,  if  you  are  anticipating  a  love  story, 


172  THE   CORAL   KING 

we  must  hasten  to  put  in  our  disclaimer ;  you  are  quite  mis 
taken  in  the  case.  Our  fair,  brilliant  heroine  was,  at  this 
time  of  speaking,  as  heart-whole  as  the  diamond  on  her 
bosom,  which  reflected  the  light  in  too  many  sparkling  rays 
ever  to  absorb  it.  She  had,  to  be  sure,  half  in  earnest,  half 
in  jest,  maintained  a  bantering,  platonic  sort  of  friendship 
with  George  Elliot.  She  had  danced,  ridden,  sung,  and 
sketched  with  him,  but  so  had  she  with  twenty  other  young 
men ;  and  as  to  coming  to  anything  tender  with  such  a 
quick,  brilliant,  restless  creature,  Elliot  would  as  soon  have 
undertaken  to  sentimentalize  over  a  glass  of  soda-water. 
No  ;  there  was  decidedly  no  love  in  the  case. 

"  What  a  curious  ring  that  is  ! "  said  Elliot  to  her,  a  day 
or  two  after,  as  they  were  reading  together. 

"  It  is  a  knight's  ring,"  said  she  playfully,  as  she  drew 
it  off  and  pointed  to  a  coral  cross  set  in  the  gold,  "  a  ring 
of  the  red-cross  knights.  Come,  now,  I  've  a  great  mind  to 
bind  you  to  my  service  with  it.'7 

"  Do,  lady  fair,"  said  Elliot,  stretching  out  his  hand  for 
the  ring. 

"  Know,  then,"  said  she,  "  if  you  take  this  pledge,  that 
you  must  obey  whatever  commands  I  lay  upon  you  in  its 
name." 

"  I  swear !  "  said  Elliot,  in  the  mock  heroic,  and  placed 
the  ring  on  his  ringer. 

An  evening  or  two  after,  Elliot  attended  Florence  to 
a  party  at  Mrs.  B.'s.  Everything  was  gay  and  brilliant, 
and  there  was  no  lack  either  of  wit  or  wine.  Elliot  was 
standing  in  a  little  alcove,  spread  with  refreshments,  with 
a  glass  of  wine  in  his  hand.  "  I  forbid  it ;  the  cup  is 
poisoned  !  "  said  a  voice  in  his  ear.  He  turned  quickly, 
and  Florence  was  at  his  side.  Every  one  was  busy,  with 
laughing  and  talking,  around,  and  nobody  saw  the  sudden 
start  and  flush  that  these  words  produced  as  Elliot  looked 
earnestly  in  the  lady's  face.  She  smiled,  and  pointed  play- 


THE   COEAL   RING  173 

fully  to  the  ring  ;  but,  after  all,  there  was  in  her  face  an  ex 
pression  of  agitation  and  interest  which  she  could  not  re 
press,  and  Elliot  felt,  however  playful  the  manner,  that  she 
was  in  earnest ;  and,  as  she  glided  away  in  the  crowd,  he 
stood  with  his  arms  folded,  and  his  eyes  fixed  on  the  spot 
where  she  disappeared. 

"  Is  it  possible  that  I  am  suspected,  —  that  there  are 
things  said  of  me  as  if  I  were  in  danger  ?  "  were  the  first 
thoughts  that  flashed  through  his  mind.  How  strange  that 
a  man  may  appear  doomed,  given  up,  and  lost,  to  the  eye 
of  every  looker-on,  before  he  begins  to  suspect  himself ! 
This  was  the  first  time  that  any  defined  apprehension  of 
loss  of  character  had  occurred  to  Elliot,  and  he  was  startled 
as  if  from  a  dream. 

"  What  the  deuce  is  the  matter  with  you,  Elliot  ?  You 
look  as  solemn  as  a  hearse !  "  said  a  young  man  near  by. 

"  Has  Miss  Elmore  cut  you  ?  "  said  another. 

"  Come,  man,  have  a  glass,"  said  a  third. 

"  Let  him  alone,  —  he  's  bewitched,"  said  a  fourth.  "  I 
saw  the  spell  laid  on  him.  None  of  us  can  say  but  our 
turn  may  come  next." 

An  hour  later,  that  evening,  Florence  was  talking  with 
her  usual  spirit  to  a  group  who  were  collected  around  her, 
when,  suddenly  looking  up,  she  saw  Elliot,  standing  in  an 
abstracted  manner  at  one  of  the  windows  that  looked  out 
into  the  balcony. 

"He  is  offended,  I  dare  say,"  she  thought;  "but  what 
do  I  care  ?  For  once  in  my  life  I  have  tried  to  do  a  right 
thing,  —  a  good  thing.  I  have  risked  giving  offense  for 
less  than  this,  many  a  time."  Still,  Florence  could  not  but 
feel  tremulous,  when,  a  few  moments  after,  Elliot  approached 
her  and  offered  his  arm  for  a  promenade.  They  walked  up 
and  down  the  room,  she  talking  volubly,  and  he  answering 
yes  and  no,  till  at  length,  as  if  by  accident,  he  drew  her 
into  the  balcony  which  overhung  the  garden.  The  moon 


174  THE   CORAL   RING 

was  shining  brightly,  and  everything  without,  in  its  placid 
quietness,  contrasted  strangely  with  the  busy,  hurrying 
scene  within. 

"  Miss  Elmore,"  said  Elliot  abruptly,  "  may  I  ask  you, 
sincerely,  had  you  any  design  in  a  remark  you  made  to  me 
in  the  early  part  of  the  evening  ?  " 

Florence  paused,  and,  though  habitually  the  most  prac 
ticed  and  self-possessed  of  women,  the  color  actually  receded 
from  her  cheek  as  she  answered,  — 

"  Yes,  Mr.  Elliot ;  I  must  confess  that  I  had." 

"  And  is  it  possible,  then,  that  you  have  heard  any 
thing  ?  " 

"  I  have  heard,  Mr.  Elliot,  that  which  makes  me  tremble 
for  you,  and  for  those  whose  life,  I  know,  is  bound  up  in 
you  ;  and,  tell  me,  were  it  well  or  friendly  in  me  to  know 
that  such  things  were  said,  that  such  danger  existed,  and 
not  to  warn  you  of  it  ?  " 

Elliot  stood  for  a  few  moments  in  silence. 

"  Have  I  offended  ?  Have  I  taken  too  great  a  liberty  ?  " 
said  Florence  gently. 

Hitherto  Elliot  had  only  seen  in  Florence  the  self-pos 
sessed,  assured,  light-hearted  woman  of  fashion ;  but  there 
was  a  reality  and  depth  of  feeling  in  the  few  words  she  had 
spoken  to  him,  in  this  interview,  that  opened  to  him  en 
tirely  a  new  view  in  her  character. 

"No,  Miss  Elmore,"  replied  he  earnestly,  after  some 
pause ;  "I  may  be  pained,  offended  I  cannot  be.  To  tell 
the  truth,  I  have  been  thoughtless,  excited,  dazzled ;  my 
spirits,  naturally  buoyant,  have  carried  me,  often,  too  far ; 
and  lately  I  have  painfully  suspected  my  own  powers  of 
resistance.  I  have  really  felt  that  I  needed  help,  but  have 
been  too  proud  to  confess,  even  to  myself,  that  I  needed  it. 
You,  Miss  Elmore,  have  done  what,  perhaps,  no  one  else 
could  have  done.  I  am  overwhelmed  with  gratitude,  and  I 
shall  bless  you  for  it  to  the  latest  day  of  my  life.  I  am 


THE   COKAL  RING  175 

ready  to  pledge  myself  to  anything  you   may  ask   on  this 
subject." 

"  Then,'7  said  Florence,  "  do  not  shrink  from  doing  what 
is  safe,  and  necessary,  and  right  for  you  to  do,  because  you 
have  once  said  you  would  not  do  it.  You  understand 
me  ?  " 

"  Precisely,"  replied  Elliot,  "  and  you  shall  be  obeyed." 
It  was  not  more  than  a  week  before  the  news  was  circu 
lated  that  even  George  Elliot  had  signed  the  pledge  of  tem 
perance.  There  was  much  wondering  at  this  sudden  turn 
among  those  who  had  known  his  utter  repugnance  to  any 
measure  of  the  kind,  and  the  extent  to  which  he  had  yielded 
to  temptation  ;  but  few  knew  how  fine  and  delicate  had 
been  the  touch  to  which  his  pride  had  yielded. 


AET   AND  NATURE 

"  Now,  girls,"  said  Mrs.  Ellis  Grey  to  her  daughters, 
"  here  is  a  letter  from  George  Somers,  and  he  is  to  be  down 
here  next  week  ;  so  I  give  you  fair  warning.'7 

"  Warning  ?  "  said  Fanny  Grey,  looking  up  from  her 
embroidery  ;  "  what  do  you  mean  by  that,  mamma  ?  " 

"Now  that's  just  you,  Fanny,"  said  the  elder  sister, 
laughing.  "  You  dear  little  simplicity,  you  can  never  un 
derstand  anything  unless  it  is  stated  as  definitely  as  the 
multiplication  table." 

"  But  we  need  no  warning  in  the  case  of  Cousin  George, 
1 7m  sure,"  said  Fanny. 

"  Cousin  George,  to  be  sure  !  Do  you  hear  the  little 
innocent  ?  "  said  Isabella,  the  second  sister.  "  I  suppose, 
Fanny,  you  never  heard  that  he  had  been  visiting  all  the 
courts  of  Europe,  seeing  all  the  fine  women,  stone,  picture, 
and  real,  that  are  to  be  found.  Such  an  amateur  and  con 
noisseur  !  " 

"  Besides  having  received  a  fortune  of  a  million  or  so," 
said  Emma.  "  I  dare  say  now,  Fanny,  you  thought  he  was 
coming  home  to  make  dandelion  chains,  and  play  with  but 
ton  balls,  as  he  used  to  do  when  he  was  a  little  boy." 

"  Fanny  will  never  take  the  world  as  it  is,"  said  Mrs. 
Grey.  "  I  do  believe  she  will  be  a  child  as  long  as  she 
lives."  Mrs.  Grey  said  this  as  if  she  were  sighing  over 
some  radical  defect  in  the  mind  of  her  daughter,  and  the 
delicate  cheek  of  Fanny  showed  a  tint  somewhat  deeper  as 
she  spoke,  and  she  went  on  with  her  embroidery  in  silence. 

Mrs.  Grey  had  been  left,  by  the  death  of  her  husband, 


ART   AND    NATURE  177 

sole  guardian  of  the  three  girls  whose  names  have  appeared 
on  the  page.  She  was  an  active,  busy,  ambitious  woman, 
one  of  the  sort  for  whom  nothing  is  ever  finished  enough, 
or  perfect  enough,  without  a  few  touches,  and  dashes,  and 
emendations;  and,  as  such  people  always  make  a  mighty 
affair  of  education,  Mrs.  Grey  had  made  it  a  life's  enterprise 
to  order,  adjust,  and  settle  the  character  of  her  daughters  ; 
and  when  we  use  the  word  "  character,"  as  Mrs.  Grey  un 
derstood  it,  we  mean  it  to  include  both  face,  figure,  dress, 
accomplishments,  as  well  as  those  more  unessential  items, 
mind  and  heart. 

Mrs.  Grey  had  determined  that  her  daughters  should  be 
something  altogether  out  of  the  common  way  ;  and  accord 
ingly  she  had  conducted  the  training  of  the  two  eldest  with 
such  zeal  and  effect  that  every  trace  of  an  original  character 
was  thoroughly  educated  out  of  them.  All  their  opinions, 
feelings,  words,  and  actions,  instead  of  gushing  naturally 
from  their  hearts,  were,  according  to  the  most  approved  au 
thority,  diligently  compared  and  revised.  Emma,  the  eld 
est,  was  an  imposing,  showy  girl,  of  some  considerable  talent, 
and  she  had  been  assiduously  trained  to  make  a  sensation 
as  a  woman  of  ability  and  intellect.  Her  mind  had  been 
filled  with  information  on  all  sorts  of  subjects,  much  faster 
than  she  had  power  to  digest  or  employ  it ;  and,  the  stand 
ard  which  her  ambitious  mother  had  set  for  her  being  rather 
above  the  range  of  her  abilities,  there  was  a  constant  sensa 
tion  of  effort  in  her  keeping  up  to  it.  In  hearing  her  talk 
you  were  constantly  reminded,  "  I  am  a  woman  of  intellect, 
—  I  am  entirely  above  the  ordinary  level  of  woman  ;  "  and 
on  all  subjects  she  was  so  anxiously  and  laboriously,  well 
and  circumstantially,  informed,  that  it  was  enough  to  make 
one's  head  ache  to  hear  her  talk. 

Isabella,  the  second  daughter,  was,  par  excellence,  a 
beauty,  —  a  tall,  sparkling,  Cleopatra-looking  girl,  whose 
rich  color,  dazzling  eyes,  and  superb  figure  might  have  bid 


178  AKT   AND   NATURE 

defiance  to  art  to  furnish  an  extra  charm  ;  nevertheless  each 
grace  had  been  as  indefatigably  drilled  and  manoeuvred  as 
the  members  of  an  artillery  company.  Eyes,  lips,  eyelashes, 
all  had  their  lesson ;  and  every  motion  of  her  sculptured 
limbs,  every  intonation  of  her  silvery  voice,  had  been  stud 
ied,  considered,  and  corrected,  till  even  her  fastidious  mother 
could  discern  nothing  that  was  wanting.  Then  were  added 
all  the  graces  of  belles-lettres,  —  all  the  approved  rules  of 
being  delighted  with  music,  painting,  and  poetry,  —  and  last 
of  all  came  the  tour  of  the  continent ;  traveling  being  gen 
erally  considered  a  sort  of  pumice-stone  for  rubbing  down 
the  varnish  and  giving  the  very  last  touch  to  character. 

During  the  time  that  all  this  was  going  on,  Miss  Fanny, 
whom  we  now  declare  our  heroine,  had  been  growing  up 
in  the  quietude  of  her  mother's  country  seat,  and  growing, 
as  girls  are  apt  to,  much  faster  than  her  mother  imagined. 
She  was  a  fair,  slender  girl,  with  a  purity  and  simplicity  of 
appearance  which,  if  it  be  not  in  itself  beauty,  had  all  the 
best  effect  of  beauty  in  interesting  and  engaging  the  heart. 
She  looked  not  so  much  beautiful  as  lovable.  Her  char 
acter  was  in  precise  correspondence  with  her  appearance  :  its 
first  and  chief  element  was  feeling ;  and  to  this  add  fancy, 
fervor,  taste,  enthusiasm  almost  up  to  the  point  of  genius, 
and  just  common  sense  enough  to  keep  them  all  in  order, 
and  you  will  have  a  very  good  idea  of  the  mind  of  Fanny 
Grey. 

Delightfully  passed  the  days  with  Fanny  during  the  ab 
sence  of  her  mother,  while,  without  thought  of  rule  or 
compass,  she  sang  her  own  songs,  painted  flowers,  and 
sketched  landscapes  from  nature,  visited  sociably  all  over 
the  village,  where  she  was  a  great  favorite,  ran  about  through 
the  fields,  over  fences,  or  in  the  woods,  with  her  little  cot 
tage  bonnet,  and,  above  all,  built  her  own  little  castles  in 
the  air  without  anybody  to  help  pull  them  down,  which 
we  think  about  the  happiest  circumstance  in  her  situation. 


ART   AND   NATURE  179 

But  affairs  wore  a  very  different  aspect  when  Mrs.  Grey 
with  her  daughters  returned  from  Europe,  as  full  of  foreign 
tastes  and  notions  as  people  of  an  artificial  character  gener 
ally  do  return.  Poor  Fanny  was  deluged  with  a  torrent  of 
new  ideas ;  she  heard  of  styles  of  appearance  and  styles 
of  beauty,  styles  of  manner  and  styles  of  conversation,  this, 
that,  and  the  other  air,  a  general  effect  and  a  particular  effect, 
and  of  four  hundred  and  fifty  ways  of  producing  an  im 
pression,  —  in  short,  it  seemed  to  her  that  people  ought 
to  be  of  wonderful  consequence  to  have  so  many  things  to 
think  and  to  say  about  the  how  and  why  of  every  word  and 
action.  Mrs.  Grey,  who  had  no  manner  of  doubt  of  her 
own  ability  to  make  over  a  character,  undertook  the  point 
with  Fanny  as  systematically  as  one  would  undertake  to 
make  over  an  old  dress.  Poor  Fanny,  who  had  an  uncon 
querable  aversion  to  trying  on  dresses  or  settling  points  in 
millinery,  went  through  with  most  exemplary  meekness  an 
entire  transformation  as  to  all  externals  ;  but  when  Mrs. 
Grey  set  herself  at  work  upon  her  mind,  and  tastes,  and 
opinions,  the  matter  became  somewhat  more  serious  ;  for 
the  buoyant  feeling  and  fanciful  elements  of  her  character 
were  as  incapable  of  being  arranged  according  to  rule  as  the 
sparkling  water-drops  are  of  being  strung  into  necklaces  and 
earrings,  or  the  gay  clouds  of  being  made  into  artificial 
flowers.  Some  warm  natural  desire  or  taste  of  her  own  was 
forever  interfering  with  her  mother's  regime  ;  some  obsti 
nate  little  "  Fanny  ism  "  would  always  put  up  its  head  in 
defiance  of  received  custom ;  and,  as  her  mother  and  sisters 
pathetically  remarked,  do  what  you  would  with  her,  she 
would  always  come  out  herself  after  all.  After  trying  labo 
riously  to  conform  to  the  pattern  which  was  daily  set  before 
her,  she  came  at  last  to  the  conclusion  that  some  natural  in 
feriority  must  forever  prevent  her  aspiring  to  accomplish 
anything  in  that  way. 

"  If  I  can't  be  what  my  mother  wishes,  I  '11  at  least  be  my- 


180  ART   AND   NATURE 

self/'  said  she  one  day  to  her  sisters,  "  for  if  I  try  to  alter 
I  shall  neither  be  myself  nor  anybody  else ;  "  and  on  the 
whole  her  mother  and  sisters  came  to  the  same  conclusion. 
And  in  truth  they  found  it  a  very  convenient  thing  to  have 
one  in  the  family  who  was  not  studying  effect,  or  aspiring  to 
be  anything  in  particular.  It  was  very  agreeable  to  Mrs. 
Grey  to  have  a  daughter  to  sit  with  her  when  she  had  the 
sick  headache,  while  the  other  girls  were  entertaining  com 
pany  in  the  drawing-room  below.  It  was  very  convenient 
to  her  sisters  to  have  some  one  whose  dress  took  so  little 
time  that  she  had  always  a  head  and  a  pair  of  hands  at 
their  disposal  in  case  of  any  toilet  emergency.  Then  she 
was  always  loving  and  affectionate,  entirely  willing  to  be 
outtalked  and  outshone  on  every  occasion  ;  and  that  was  an 
other  advantage. 

As  to  Isabella  and  Emma,  the  sensation  that  they  made 
in  society  was  enough  to  have  gratified  a  dozen  ordinary 
belles.  All  that  they  said,  and  did,  and  wore,  was  instant 
and  unquestionable  precedent ;  and  young  gentlemen,  all 
starch  and  perfume,  twirled  their  laced  pocket-handkerchiefs, 
and  declared  on  their  honor  that  they  knew  not  which  was 
the  most  overcoming,  the  genius  and  wit  of  Miss  Emma,  or 
the  bright  eyes  of  Miss  Isabella ;  though  it  was  an  agreed 
point  that,  between  them  both,  not  a  heart  in  the  gay  world 
remained  in  its  owner's  possession,  —  a  thing  which  might 
have  a  serious  sound  to  one  who  did  not  know  the  character 
of  these  articles,  often  the  most  trifling  item  in  the  inventory 
of  worldly  possessions.  And,  all  this  while,  all  that  was  said 
of  our  heroine  was  something  in  this  way  :  "  I  believe  there 
is  another  sister,  —  is  there  not  ?  " 

"  Yes,  there  is  a  quiet  little  blue-eyed   lady,  who  never 

has  a  word  to  say  for  herself,  —  quite  amiable,  I  'm  told." 

Now,  it  was  not  a  fact  that  Miss  Fanny  never  had  a  word 

to  say  for  herself.      If  people  had  seen  her  on  a  visit  at  any 

one  of  the  houses  along  the  little  green  street  of  her  native 


ART   AND   NATURE  181 

village,  they  might  have  learned  that  her  tongue  could  go 
fast  enough. 

But  in  lighted  drawing-rooms,  and  among  buzzing  voices, 
and  surrounded  by  people  who  were  always  saying  things  be 
cause  such  things  were  proper  to  be  said,  Fanny  was  always 
dizzy,  and  puzzled,  and  unready ;  and  for  fear  that  she  would 
say  something  that  she  should  not,  she  concluded  to  say  no 
thing  at  all :  nevertheless  she  made  good  use  of  her  eyes, 
and  found  a  very  quiet  amusement  in  looking  on  to  see  how 
other  people  conducted  matters. 

Well,  Mr.  George  Somers  is  actually  arrived  at  Mrs.  Grey's 
country  seat,  and  there  he  sits  with  Miss  Isabella  in  the  deep 
recess  of  that  window,  where  the  white  roses  are  peeping  in 
so  modestly. 

"  To  be  sure,"  thought  Fanny  to  herself,  as  she  quietly 
surveyed  him  looming  up  through  the  shade  of  a  pair  of 
magnificent  whiskers,  and  heard  him  passing  the  shuttlecock 
of  compliment  back  and  forth  with  the  most  assured  and 
practiced  air  in  the  world,  —  "  to  be  sure,  I  was  a  child  in  im 
agining  that  I  should  see  Cousin  George  Somers.  I  'm  sure 
this  magnificent  young  gentleman,  full  of  all  utterance  and 
knowledge,  is  not  the  cousin  that  I  used  to  feel  so  easy  with  ; 
no,  indeed ;  "  and  Fanny  gave  a  half  sigh,  and  then  went 
out  into  the  garden  to  water  her  geraniums. 

For  some  days  Mr.  Somers  seemed  to  feel  put  upon  his 
reputation  to  sustain  the  character  of  gallant,  savant,  connois 
seur,  etc.,  which  every  one  who  makes  the  tour  of  the  conti 
nent  is  expected  to  bring  home  as  a  matter  of  course  ;  for 
there  is  seldom  a  young  gentleman  who  knows  he  has  quali 
fications  in  this  line  who  can  resist  the  temptation  of  show 
ing  what  he  can  do.  Accordingly  he  discussed  tragedies, 
and  reviews,  and  ancient  and  modern  customs  with  Miss 
Emma  ;  and  with  Miss  Isabella  retouched  her  drawings  and 
exhibited  his  own ;  sported  the  most  choice  and  recherche 


182  ART  AND   NATURE 

style  of  compliment  at  every  turn  ;  and,  in  short,  flattered 
himself,  perhaps  justly,  that  he  was  playing  the  irresistible 
in  a  manner  quite  equal  to  that  of  his  fair  cousins. 

Now,  all  this  while  Miss  Fanny  was  mistaken  in  one  point, 
for  Mr.  George  Somers,  though  an  exceedingly  fine  gentle 
man,  had,  after  all,  quite  a  substratum  of  reality  about  him 
of  real  heart,  real  feeling,  and  real  opinion  of  his  own  ;  and 
the  consequence  was  that,  when  tired  of  the  effort  of  convers 
ing,  he  really  longed  to  find  somebody  to  talk  to  ;  and  in  this 
mood  he  one  evening  strolled  into  the  library,  leaving  the 
gay  party  in  the  drawing-room  to  themselves.  Miss  Fanny 
was  there,  quite  intent  upon  a  book  of  selections  from  the 
old  English  poets. 

"  Really,  Miss  Fanny,'7  said  Mr.  Somers,  "  you  are  very 
sparing  of  the  favor  of  your  company  to  us  this  evening." 

"  Oh,  I  presume  my  company  is  not  much  missed,"  said 
Fanny  with  a  smile. 

"  You  must  have  a  poor  opinion  of  our  taste,  then,"  said 
Mr.  Somers. 

"  Come,  come,  Mr.  Somers,"  replied  Fanny,  "  you  forget 
the  person  you  are  talking  to  :  it  is  not  at  all  necessary  for 
you  to  compliment  me;  nobody  ever  does, — so  you  may 
feel  relieved  of  that  trouble." 

"  Nobody  ever  does,  Miss  Fanny  ?   pray,  how  is  that  ?  " 

"  Because  I  'm  not  the  sort  of  person  to  say  such  things 
to." 

"  And,  pray,  what  sort  of  person  ought  one  to  be,  in  order 
to  have  such  things  said  ?  "  replied  Mr.  Somers. 

"  Why,  like  sister  Isabella,  or  like  Emma.  You  under 
stand  I  am  a  sort  of  little  nobody  ;  if  any  one  wastes  fine 
words  on  me,  I  never  know  what  to  make  of  them." 

"  And,  pray,  what  must  one  say  to  you  ?  "  said  Mr.  So 
mers  quite  amused. 

"Why,  what  they  really  think  and  really  feel;  and  I 
am  always  puzzled  by  anything  else." 


ART   AND   NATURE  183 

Accordingly,  about  a  half  an  hour  afterwards,  you  might 
have  seen  the  much-admired  Mr.  Somers  once  more  trans 
formed  into  the  Cousin  George,  and  he  and  Fanny  engaged 
in  a  very  interesting  tete-a-tete  about  old  times  and  things. 

Now,  you  may  skip  across  a  fortnight  from  this  evening 
and  then  look  in  at  the  same  old  library,  just  as  the  setting 
sun  is  looking  in  at  its  western  window,  and  you  will  see 
Fanny  sitting  back  a  little  in  the  shadow,  with  one  strag 
gling  ray  of  light  illuminating  her  pure  childish  face,  and 
she  is  looking  up  at  Mr.  George  Somers,  as  if  in  some  sud 
den  perplexity  ;  and,  dear  me  !  if  we  are  not  mistaken,  our 
young  gentleman  is  blushing. 

"  Why,  Cousin  George,"  says  the  lady,  "  what  do  you 
mean  ?  " 

"  I  thought  I  spoke  plainly  enough,  Fanny,"  replied 
Cousin  George  in  a  tone  that  might  have  made  the  matter 
plain  enough,  to  be  sure. 

Fanny  laughed  outright,  and  the  gentleman  looked  terri 
bly  serious. 

"  Indeed,  now,  don't  be  angry,"  said  she,  as  he  turned 
away  with  a  vexed  and  mortified  air  ;  "  indeed,  now,  I  can't 
help  laughing,  it  seems  to  me  so  odd  ;  what  will  they  all 
think  of  you  ?  " 

"  It 's  of  no  consequence  to  me  what  they  think,"  said 
Mr.  Somers.  "  I  think,  Fanny,  if  you  had  the  heart  I  gave 
you  credit  for,  you  might  have  seen  my  feelings  before  now." 

"Now,  do  sit  down,  my  dear  cousin,"  said  Fanny  ear 
nestly,  drawing  him  into  a  chair,  "  and  tell  me,  how  could  I, 
poor  little  Miss  Fanny  Nobody,  how  could  I  have  thought 
any  such  thing  with  such  sisters  as  I  have  ?  I  did  think 
that  you  liked  me,  that  you  knew  more  of  my  real  feelings 
than  mamma  and  sisters  ;  but  that  you  should  —  that  you 
ever  should —  Why,  I  am  astonished  that  you  did  not 
fall  in  love  with  Isabella." 


184  ART   AND   NATURE 

"  That  would  have  met  your  feelings,  then  ? "  said 
George  eagerly,  and  looking  as  if  he  would  have  looked 
through  her,  eyes,  soul,  and  all. 

"  No,  no,  indeed,"  she  said,  turning  away  her  head ; 
"  but,'7  added  she  quickly,  "  you  '11  lose  all  your  credit  for 
good  taste.  Now,  tell  me,  seriously,  what  do  you  like  me 
for  ?  " 

"  Well,  then,  Fanny,  I  can  give  you  the  best  reason.  I 
like  you  for  being  a  real,  sincere,  natural  girl  —  for  being 
simple  in  your  tastes,  and  simple  in  your  appearance,  and 
simple  in  your  manners,  and  for  having  heart  enough  left, 
as  I  hope,  to  love  plain  George  Somers,  with  all  his  faults, 
and  not  Mr.  Somers's  reputation,  or  Mr.  Somers's  establish 
ment." 

"  Well,  this  is  all  very  reasonable  to  me,  of  course,"  said 
Fanny,  "but  it  will  be  so  much  Greek  to  poor  mamma." 

"  I  dare  say  your  mother  could  never  understand  how 
seeing  the  very  acme  of  cultivation  in  all  countries  should 
have  really  made  my  eyes  ache,  and  long  for  something  as 
simple  as  green  grass  or  pure  water  to  rest  them  on.  I 
came  down  here  to  find  it  among  my  cousins,  and  I  found 
in  your  sisters  only  just  such  women  as  I  have  seen  and 
admired  all  over  Europe,  till  I  was  tired  of  admiring.  Your 
mother  has  achieved  what  she  aimed  at,  perfectly  ;  I  know 
of  no  circle  that  could  produce  higher  specimens ;  but  it 
is  all  art,  triumphant  art,  after  all,  and  I  have  so  strong  a 
current  of  natural  feeling  running  through  my  heart  that  I 
could  never  be  happy  except  with  a  fresh,  simple,  impulsive 
character." 

"  Like  me,  you  are  going  to  say,"  said  Fanny,  laughing. 
"  Well,  I  '11  admit  that  you  are  right.  It  would  be  a  pity 
that  you  should  not  have  one  vote,  at  least." 


THE   NEW   YEAE'S   GIFT 

THE  sparkling  ice  and  snow  covered  hill  and  valley ; 
tree  and  bush  were  glittering  with  diamonds,  the  broad, 
coarse  rails  of  the  fence  shone  like  bars  of  solid  silver, 
while  little  fringes  of  icicles  glittered  between  each  bar. 

In  the  yard  of  yonder  dwelling  the  scarlet  berries  of  the 
mountain  ash  shine  through  a  transparent  casing  of  crystal, 
and  the  sable  spruces  and  white  pines,  powdered  and  glit 
tering  with  the  frost,  have  assumed  an  icy  brilliancy.  The 
eaves  of  the  house,  the  door-knocker,  the  pickets  of  the  fence, 
the  honeysuckles  and  syringas,  once  the  boast  of  summer, 
are  all  alike  polished,  varnished,  arid  resplendent  with  their 
winter  trappings,  now  gleaming  in  the  last  rays  of  the  early 
sunset. 

Within  that  large,  old-fashioned  dwelling  might  you  see 
an  ample  parlor,  all  whose  adjustments  and  arrangements 
speak  of  security,  warmth,  and  home  enjoyment ;  of  money 
spent  not  for  show,  but  for  comfort.  Thick  crimson  curtains 
descend  in  heavy  folds  over  the  embrasures  of  the  windows, 
and  the  ample  hearth  and  wide  fireplace  speak  of  the  cus 
toms  of  the  good  old  times,  ere  that  gloomy,  unpoetic,  un 
social  gnome  —  the  air-tight  —  had  monopolized  the  place  of 
the  blazing  fireside. 

No  dark  air-tight,  however,  filled  our  ancient  chimney ; 
but  there  was  a  genuine  old-fashioned  fire  of  the  most  ap 
proved  architecture,  with  a  gallant  backlog  and  forestick, 
supporting  and  keeping  in  order  a  crackling  pile  of  dry 
wood,  that  was  whirring  and  blazing  warm  welcome  for  all 
whom  it  might  concern,  occasionally  bursting  forth  into 


186  THE  NEW  YEAR'S  GIFT 

most  portentous  and  earnest  snaps,  which  rung  through  the 
room  with  a  genuine,  hospitable  emphasis,  as  if  the  fire  was 
enjoying  himself,  and  having  a  good  time,  and  wanted  all 
hands  to  draw  up  and  make  themselves  at  home  with  him. 

So  looked  that  parlor  to  me,  when,  tired  with  a  long 
day's  ride,  I  found  my  way  into  it,  just  at  evening,  and  was 
greeted  with  a  hearty  welcome  from  my  old  friend,  Colonel 
Winthrop.  In  addition  to  all  that  I  have  already  described, 
let  the  reader  add,  if  he  pleases,  the  vision  of  a  wide  and 
ample  tea-table,  covered  with  a  snowy  cloth,  on  which  the 
servants  are  depositing  the  evening  meal.  I  had  not  seen 
Winthrop  for  years  ;  but  we  were  old  college  friends,  and  I 
had  gladly  accepted  an  invitation  to  renew  our  ancient  inti 
macy  by  passing  the  New  Year's  season  in  his  family.  I 
found  him  still  the  same  hale,  kindly,  cheery  fellow  as  in 
days  of  old,  though  time  had  taken  the  same  liberty  with 
his  handsome  head  that  Jack  Frost  had  with  the  cedars  and 
spruces  out  of  doors,  in  giving  to  it  a  graceful  and  becoming 
sprinkle  of  silver. 

"  Here  you  are,  my  dear  fellow,"  said  he,  shaking  me  by 
both  hands;  "just  in  season  for  the  ham  and  chickens  — 
coffee  all  smoking.  My  dear,"  he  added  to  a  motherly- 
looking  woman  who  now  entered,  "  here  's  John  !  I  beg 
pardon,  Mr.  Stuart."  As  he  spoke,  two  bold,  handsome 
boys  broke  into  the  room,  accompanied  by  a  huge  New 
foundland  dog  —  all  as  full  of  hilarity  and  abundant  anima 
tion  as  an  afternoon  of  glorious  skating  could  have  generated. 

"  Ha,  Tom  and  Ned!  —  you  rogues  —  you  don't  want 
any  supper  to-night,  I  suppose,"  said  the  father  gayly ; 
"  come  up  here  and  be  introduced  to  my  old  friend.  Here 
they  come !  "  said  he,  as  one  by  one  the  opening  doors  ad 
mitted  the  various  children  to  the  summons  of  the  evening 
meal.  "  Here,"  presenting  a  tall  young  girl,  "  is  our  eldest, 
beginning  to  think  herself  a  young  lady,  on  the  strength  of 
being  fifteen  years  old,  and  wearing  her  hair  tucked  up. 


187 

And  here  is  Eliza,"  said  he,  giving  a  pull  to  a  blooming, 
roguish  girl  of  ten,  with  large,  saucy  black  eyes.  "  And 
here  is  Willie !  "  —  a  bashful,  blushing  little  fellow  in  a 
checked  apron.  "  And  now,  where 's  the  little  queen  ?  — 
where  7s  her  majesty  ?  —  where 's  Ally  ?  " 

A  golden  head  of  curls  was,  at  this  instant,  thrust  timidly 
in  at  the  door,  and  I  caught  a  passing  glimpse  of  a  pair  of 
great  blue  eyes ;  but  the  head,  curls,  eyes,  and  all,  instantly 
vanished,  though  a  little  fat  dimpled  hand  was  seen  holding 
on  to  the  door,  and  swinging  it  back  and  forward.  "  Ally, 
dear,  come  in  !  "  said  the  mother,  in  a  tone  of  encouragement. 
"  Come  in,  Ally !  come  in,"  was  repeated  in  various  tones, 
by  each  child  ;  but  brother  Tom  pushed  open  the  door,  and 
taking  the  little  recusant  in  his  arms,  brought  her  fairly  in, 
and  deposited  her  on  her  father's  knee.  She  took  firm  hold 
of  his  coat,  and  then  turned  and  gazed  shyly  upon  me  — 
her  large  splendid  blue  eyes  gleaming  through  her  golden 
curls.  It  was  evident  that  this  wTas  the  pet  lamb  of  the 
fold,  and  she  was  just  at  that  age  when  babyhood  is  verging 
into  childhood  —  an  age  often  indefinitely  prolonged  in  a 
large  family,  where  the  universal  admiration  that  waits  on 
every  look,  and  motion,  and  word  of  the  baby,  and  the  mul 
tiplied  monopolies  and  privileges  of  the  baby  estate,  seem, 
by  universal  consent,  to  extend  as  long  and  as  far  as  possi 
ble.  And  why  not  thus  delay  the  little  bark  of  the  child 
among  the  flowery  shores  of  its  first  Eden  ?  —  defer  them 
as  we  may,  the  hard,  the  real,  the  cold  commonplace  of  life 
comes  on  all  too  soon ! 

"  This  is  our  New  Year's  gift,"  said  Winthrop,  fondly 
caressing  the  curly  head.  "  Ally,  tell  the  gentleman  how 
old  you  are." 

"  I  s'all  be  four  next  New  'Ear's,"  said  the  little  one, 
while  all  the  circle  looked  applause. 

"  Ally,  tell  the  gentleman  what  you  are,"  said  brother 
Ned. 


188  THE  NEW  YEAR'S  GIFT 

Ally  looked  coquettishly  at  me,  as  if  she  did  not  know 
whether  she  should  favor  me  to  that  extent,  and  the  young 
princess  was  further  solicited. 

"  Tell  him  what  Ally  is/'  said  the  oldest  sister,  with  a 
patronizing  air. 

"  Papa's  New  'Ear's  p'esent,"  said  my  little  lady,  at  last. 

"  And  mamma's,  too  !  "  said  the  mother  gently,  amid 
the  applauses  of  the  admiring  circle. 

Winthrop  looked  apologetically  at  me,  and  said,  "  We  all 
spoil  her  —  that 's  a  fact  —  every  one  of  us  down  to  Rover, 
there,  who  lets  her  tie  tippets  round  his  neck,  and  put  bon 
nets  on  his  head,  and  hug  and  kiss  him,  to  a  degree  that 
would  disconcert  any  other  dog  in  the  world." 

If  ever  beauty  and  poetic  grace  was  an  apology  for  spoil 
ing,  it  was  in  this  case.  Every  turn  of  the  bright  head, 
every  change  of  the  dimpled  face  and  round  and  chubby 
limbs,  was  a  picture  ;  and  within  the  little  form  was  shrined 
a  heart  full  of  love,  and  running  over  with  compassion  and 
good  will  for  every  breathing  thing ;  with  feelings  so  sensi 
tive,  that  it  was  papa's  delight  to  make  her  laugh  and  cry 
with  stories,  and  to  watch  in  the  blue,  earnest  mirror  of  her 
eye  every  change  and  turn  of  his  narration,  as  he  took  her 
through  long  fairy  tales,  and  old-fashioned  giant  and  ghost 
legends,  purely  for  his  own  amusement,  and  much  repri 
manded  all  the  way  by  mamma,  for  filling  the  child's  head 
with  nonsense. 

It  was  now,  however,  time  to  turn  from  the  beauty  to  the 
substantial  realities  of  the  supper  table.  I  observed  that 
Ally's  high  chair  was  stationed  close  by  her  father's  side  ; 
and  ever  and  anon,  while  gayly  talking,  he  would  slip  into 
her  rosy  little  mouth  some  choice  bit  from  his  plate,  these 
notices  and  attentions  seeming  so  instinctive  and  habitual, 
that  they  did  not  for  a  moment  interrupt  the  thread  of  the 
conversation.  Once  or  twice  I  caught  a  glimpse  of  Rover's 
great  rough  nose,  turned  anxiously  up  to  the  little  chair  ; 


THE  NEW  YEAR'S  GIFT  189 

whereat  the  small  white  hand  forthwith  slid  something  into 
his  mouth,  though  by  what  dexterity  it  ever  came  out  from 
the  great  black  jaws  undevoured  was  a  mystery.  When 
the  supply  of  meat  on  the  small  lady's  plate  was  exhausted, 
I  observed  the  little  hand  slyly  slipping  into  her  father's 
provision  grounds,  and  with  infinite  address  abstracting 
small  morsels,  whereat  there  was  much  mysterious  winking 
between  the  father  and  the  other  children,  and  considerable 
tittering  among  the  younger  ones,  though  all  in  marvelous 
silence,  as  it  was  deemed  best  policy  not  to  appear  to  notice 
Ally's  tricks,  lest  they  should  become  too  obstreperous. 

In  the  course  of  the  next  day  I  found  myself,  to  all  in 
tents  and  purposes,  as  much  part  and  parcel  of  the  family 
as  if  I  had  been  born  and  bred  among  them.  I  found  that 
I  had  come  in  a  critical  time,  when  secrets  were  plenty 
as  blackberries.  It  being  New  Year's  week,  all  the  little 
hoarded  resources  of  the  children,  both  of  money  and  of  in 
genuity,  were  in  brisk  requisition,  getting  up  New  Year's 
presents  for  each  other,  and  for  father  and  mother.  The 
boys  had  their  little  tin  savings  banks,  where  all  the  stray 
pennies  of  the  year  had  been  carefully  hoarded  —  all  that 
had  been  got  by  blacking  papa's  boots,  or  by  piling  wood, 
or  weeding  in  the  garden  —  mingled  with  some  fortunate 
additions  which  had  come  as  windfalls  from  some  liberal 
guest  or  friend.  All  now  were  poured  out  daily,  on  tables, 
on  chairs,  on  stools,  and  counted  over  with  wonderful  ear 
nestness. 

My  friend,  though  in  easy  circumstances,  was  somewhat 
old-fashioned  in  his  notions.  He  never  allowed  his  children 
spending  money,  except  such  as  they  fairly  earned  by  some 
exertions  of  their  own.  "  Let  them  do  something,"  he 
would  say,  "  to  make  it  fairly  theirs,  and  their  generosity 
will  then  have  some  significance  —  it  is  very  easy  for  chil 
dren  to  be  generous  on  their  parents'  money."  Great  were 
the  comparing  of  resources  and  estimates  of  property  at  this 


190  THE  NEW  YEAR'S  GIFT 

time.  Tom  and  Ned,  who  were  big  enough  to  saw  wood 
and  hoe  in  the  garden,  had  accumulated  the  vast  sum  of 
three  dollars  each,  and  walked  about  with  their  hands  in 
their  pockets,  and  talked  largely  of  purchases,  like  gentle 
men  of  substance.  They  thought  of  getting  mamma  a  new 
muff,  and  papa  a  writing-desk,  besides  trinkets  innumerable 
for  sisters,  and  a  big  doll  for  Ally  ;  but  after  they  had  made 
one  expedition  to  a  neighboring  town  to  inquire  prices,  I 
observed  that  their  expectations  were  greatly  moderated. 
As  to  little  Willie,  him  of  the  checked  apron,  his  whole 
earthly  substance  amounted  to  thirty -seven  cents ;  yet  there 
was  not  a  member  of  the  whole  family  circle,  including  the 
servants,  that  he  could  find  it  in  his  heart  to  leave  out  of 
his  remembrance.  I  ingratiated  myself  with  him  immedi 
ately  ;  and  twenty  times  a  day  did  I  count  over  his  money 
to  him,  and  did  sums  innumerable  to  show  how  much  would 
be  left  if  he  got  this,  that,  or  the  other  article,  which  he 
was  longing  to  buy  for  father  or  mother.  I  proved  to  him 
most  invaluable,  by  helping  him  to  think  of  certain  small 
sixpenny  and  fourpenny  articles  that  would  be  pretty  to 
give  to  sisters,  making  out  with  marbles  for  Tom  and  Ned, 
and  a  very  valiant-looking  sugar  horse  for  Ally.  Miss  Emma 
had  the  usual  resource  of  young  ladies,  flosses,  worsted,  and 
knitting,  and  crochet  needles,  and  busy  fingers,  and  she  was 
giving  private  lessons  daily  to  Eliza,  to  enable  her  to  get 
up  some  napkin-rings  and  bookmarks  for  the  all-important 
occasion.  A  gentle  air  of  bustle  and  mystery  pervaded  the 
whole  circle.  I  was  intrusted  with  so  many  secrets  that  I 
could  scarcely  make  an  observation,  or  take  a  turn  about  the 
room,  without  being  implored  to  " remember"  —  "not  to 
tell  "  —  not  to  let  papa  know  this,  or  mamma  that.  I  was 
not  to  let  papa  know  how  the  boys  were  going  to  buy  him 
a  new  inkstand,  with  a  pen-rack  upon  it,  which  was  entirely 
to  outshine  all  previous  inkstands  ;  nor  tell  mamma  about 
the  crochet  bag  that  Emma  was  knitting  for  her.  On  all 


THE  NEW  YEAR'S  GIFT  191 

sides  were  mysterious  whisperings,  and  showing  of  things 
wrapped  in  brown  paper,  glimpses  of  which,  through  some 
inadvertence,  were  always  appearing  to  the  public  eye. 
There  were  close  councils  held  behind  doors  and  in  corners, 
and  suddenly  broken  off  when  some  particular  member  of 
the  family  appeared.  There  were  flutters  of  vanishing  book 
marks,  which  were  always  whisked  away  when  a  door 
opened ;  and  incessant  ejaculations  of  admiration  and  aston 
ishment  from  one  privileged  looker  or  another  on  things 
which  might  not  be  mentioned  to  or  beheld  by  others. 

Papa  and  mamma  behaved  with  the  utmost  circumspec 
tion  and  discretion,  and  though  surrounded  on  all  sides  by 
such  pitfalls  and  labyrinths  of  mystery,  moved  about  with 
an  air  of  the  most  unconscious  simplicity  possible.  But 
little  Ally,  from  her  privileged  character,  became  a  very 
spoil-sport  in  the  proceedings.  Her  small  ringers  were 
always  pulling  open  parcels  prematurely,  or  lifting  pocket- 
handkerchiefs  ingeniously  thrown  down  over  mysterious 
articles,  and  thus  disconcerting  the  very  profoundest  sur 
prises  that  ever  were  planned ;  and  were  it  not  that  she  was 
still  within  the  bounds  of  the  kingly  state  of  babyhood, 
and  therefore  could  be  held  to  do  no  wrong,  she  would  cer 
tainly  have  fallen  into  general  disgrace ;  but  then  it  was 
"  Ally,"  and  that  was  apology  for  all  things,  and  the  ex 
ploit  was  related  in  half  whispers  as  so  funny,  so  cunning, 
that  Miss  Curlypate  was  in  no  wise  disconcerted  at  the  head- 
shakes  and  "  naughty  Allys  "  that  visited  her  offenses. 

"  What  dis  ?  "  said  she,  one  morning,  as  she  was  rum 
maging  over  some  packages  indiscreetly  left  on  the  sofa. 

"  Oh,  Emma  !  see  Ally !  "  exclaimed  Eliza,  darting  for 
ward  ;  but  too  late,  for  the  flaxen  curls  and  blue  eyes  of  a 
wax  doll  had  already  appeared. 

"  Now  she  '11  know  all  about  it,"  said  Eliza  despairingly. 

Ally  looked  in  astonishment,  as  dolly's  visage  promptly 
disappeared  from  her  view,  and  then  turned  to  pursue  her 


192  THE  NEW  YEAR'S  GIFT 

business  in  another  quarter  of  the  room,  where,  spying 
something  glittering  under  the  sofa,  she  forthwith  pulled 
out  and  held  up  to  public  view  a  crotchet  bag  sparkling 
with  innumerable  steel  fringes. 

"  Oh,  what  be  dis  ?  "  she  exclaimed  again. 

Miss  Emma  sprang  to  the  rescue,  while  all  the  other  chil 
dren,  with  a  burst  of  exclamations,  turned  their  eyes  on 
mamma.  Mamma  very  prudently  did  not  turn  her  head, 
and  appeared  to  be  lost  in  reflection,  though  she  must  have 
been  quite  deaf  not  to  have  heard  the  loud  whispers,  "It's 
mamma's  bag  !  only  think  !  Don't  you  think,  Tom,  Ally 
pulled  out  mamma's  bag,  and  held  it  right  up  before  her ! 
Don't  you  think  she  '11  find  out  ?  " 

Master  Tom  valued  himself  greatly  on  the  original  and 
profound  ways  he  had  of  adapting  his  presents  to  the  tastes 
of  the  receiver  without  exciting  suspicion  :  for  example, 
he  would  come  up  into  his  mother's  room,  all  booted  and 
coated  for  a  ride  to  town,  jingling  his  purse  gleefully,  and 
begin,  — 

"  Mother,  mother,  which  do  you  like  best,  pink  or  blue  ?  " 

"  That  might  depend  on  circumstances,  my  son." 

"  Well,  but,  mother,  for  a  neck  ribbon,  for  example  ;  sup 
pose  somebody  was  going  to  buy  you  a  neck  ribbon." 

"  Why,  blue  would  be  the  most  suitable  for  me,  I 
think." 

"Well,  but  mother,  which  should  you  think  was  the 
best,  a  neck  ribbon  or  a  book  ?  " 

"  What  book  ?     It  would  depend  something  on  that." 

"  Why,  as  good  a  book  as  a  fellow  could  get  for  thirty- 
seven  cents,"  says  Tom. 

"  Well,  on  the  whole,  I  think  I  should  prefer  the  rib 
bon." 

"  There,  Ned,"  says  Tom,  coming  down  the  stairs,  "  I  've 
found  out  just  what  mother  wants,  without  telling  her  a 
word  about  it." 


THE  NEW  YEAR'S  GIFT  193 

But  the  crowning  mystery  of  all  the  great  family  arcana, 
the  thing  that  was  going  to  astonish  papa  and  mamma  past  all 
recovery,  was  certain  projected  bookmarks,  that  little  Ally 
was  going  to  be  made  to  work  for  them.  This  bold  scheme 
was  projected  by  Miss  Emma,  and  she  had  armed  herself 
with  a  whole  paper  of  sugar  plums,  to  be  used  as  adjuvants 
to  moral  influence,  in  case  the  discouragements  of  the  under 
taking  should  prove  too  much  for  Ally's  patience. 

As  to  Ally,  she  felt  all  the  dignity  of  the  enterprise  — 
her  whole  little  soul  was  absorbed  in  it.  Seated  on  Emma's 
knee  with  the  needle  between  her  little  fat  fingers,  and 
holding  the  board  very  tight,  as  if  she  was  afraid  it  would 
run  away  from  her,  she  very  gravely  and  carefully  stuck  the 
needle  in  every  place  but  the  right  —  pricked  her  pretty 
fingers  —  ate  sugar  plums  —  stopping  now  to  pat  Rover, 
and  now  to  stroke  pussy  —  letting  fall  her  thimble,  and 
bustling  down  to  pick  it  up  —  occasionally  taking  an  episod 
ical  race  round  the  room  with  Rover,  during  which  time 
sister  Emma  added  a  stitch  or  two  to  the  work.  I  would 
not  wish  to  have  been  required,  on  oath,  to  give  in  my 
undisguised  opinion  as  to  the  number  of  stitches  the  little 
one  really  put  into  her  present,  but  she  had  a  most  genuine 
and  firm  conviction  that  she  worked  every  stitch  of  it  her 
self  ;  and  when,  on  returning  from  a  scamper  with  pussy, 
she  found  one  or  two  letters  finished,  she  never  doubted 
that  the  whole  was  of  her  own  execution,  and,  of  course, 
thought  that  working  bookmarks  was  one  of  the  most 
delightful  occupations  in  the  world.  It  was  all  that  her 
little  heart  could  do  to  keep  from  papa  and  mamma  the  won 
derful  secret.  Every  evening  she  would  bustle  about  her 
father  with  an  air  of  such  great  mystery,  and  seek  to  pique 
his  curiosity  by  most  skillful  hints,  such  as,  — 

"  I  know  somefing !  but  I  s'ant  tell  you.77 

"  Not  tell  me  !      Oh,  Ally  !      Why  not  ?  " 

"Oh,  it's  about  — a  New  'Ear's  p'es— " 


194  THE  NEW  YEAR'S  GIFT 

"  Ally,  Ally,"  resounds  from  several  voices,  "  don't  you 
tell." 

"  No,  I  s'an't  —  but  you  are  going  to  have  a  New  'Ear's 
p'esant,  and  so  is  mamma,  and  you  can't  dess  what  it  is." 

"  Can't  I  ?  " 

"No,  and  I  s'an't  tell  you." 

"  Now,  Ally,"  said  papa,  pretending  to  look  aggrieved. 

"  Well,  it 's  going  to  be  —  somefin  worked." 

"  Ally,  be  careful,"  said  Emma. 

"  Yes,  I  '11  be  very  tareful ;  it 's  somefin  —  weall  pretty 
—  somefin  to  put  in  a  book.  You  '11  find  out  about  it  by 
and  by." 

"  I  think  I  'm  in  a  fair  way  to,"  said  the  father. 

The  conversation  now  digressed  to  other  subjects,  and  the 
nurse  came  in  to  take  Ally  to  bed  •  who,  as  she  kissed  her 
father,  in  the  fullness  of  her  heart,  added  a  fresh  burst  of  in 
formation.  "  Papa,"  said  she,  in  an  earnest  whisper,  "  that 
fin  is  about  so  long  "  —  measuring  on  her  fat  little  arm. 

"  A  fin,  Ally?  Why,  you  are  not  going  to  give  me  a 
fish,  are  you  ?  " 

"  I  mean  that  thing,"  said  Ally,  speaking  the  word  with 
great  effort,  and  getting  quite  red  in  the  face. 

"  Oh,  that  thing  ;  I  beg  pardon,  my  lady ;  that  puts 
another  face  on  the  communication,"  said  the  father,  strok 
ing  her  head  fondly,  as  he  bade  her  good-night. 

"The  child  can  talk  plainer  than  she  does,"  said  the 
father,  "  but  we  are  all  so  delighted  with  her  little  Hotten 
tot  dialect,  that  I  don't  know  but  she  will  keep  it  up  till 
she  is  twenty." 

It  now  wanted  only  three  days  of  the  New  Year,  when  a 
sudden  and  deadly  shadow  fell  on  the  dwelling,  late  so 
busy  and  joyous  —  a  shadow  from  the  grave  ;  and  it  fell 
on  the  flower  of  the  garden  —  the  star  —  the  singing  bird 
—  the  loved  and  loving  Ally. 


THE  NEW  YEAR'S  GIFT  195 

She  was  stricken  down  at  once,  in  the  flush  of  her  inno 
cent  enjoyment,  by  a  fever,  which  from  the  first  was  ush 
ered  in  with  symptoms  the  most  fearful.  All  the  bustle 
of  preparation  ceased  —  the  presents  were  forgotten  or  lay 
about  unfinished,  as  if  no  one  now  had  a  heart  to  put  their 
hand  to  anything  ;  while  up  in  her  little  crib  lay  the  beloved 
one,  tossing  and  burning  with  restless  fever,  and  without 
power  to  recognize  any  of  the  loved  faces  that  bent  over 
her.  The  doctor  came  twice  a  day,  with  a  heavy  step,  and 
a  face  in  which  anxious  care  was  too  plainly  written  ;  and 
while  he  was  there  each  member  of  the  circle  hung  with 
anxious,  imploring  faces  about  him,  as  if  to  entreat  him  to 
save  their  darling  ;  but  still  the  deadly  disease  held  on  its 
relentless  course,  in  spite  of  all  that  could  be  done. 

"  I  thought  myself  prepared  to  meet  God's  will  in  any 
form  it  might  come,"  said  Winthrop  to  me ;  "  but  this  one 
thing  I  had  forgotten.  It  never  entered  into  my  head  that 
my  little  Ally  could  die." 

The  evening  before  New  Year's,  the  deadly  disease  seemed 
to  be  progressing  more  rapidly  than  ever  ;  and  when  the 
doctor  came  for  his  evening  call,  he  found  all  the  family 
gathered  in  mournful  stillness  around  the  little  crib. 

"I  suppose,"  said  the  father,  with  an  effort  to  speak 
calmly,  "  that  this  may  be  her  last  night  with  us." 

The  doctor  made  no  answer,  and  the  whole  circle  of 
brothers  and  sisters  broke  out  into  bitter  weeping. 

"  It  is  just  possible  that  she  may  live  till  to-morrow," 
said  the  doctor. 

"  To-morrow  —  her  birthday  !  "  said  the  mother.  "  Oh, 
Ally,  Ally  !  " 

Wearily  passed  the  watches  of  that  night.  Each  brother 
and  sister  had  kissed  the  pale  little  cheek,  to  bid  farewell, 
and  gone  to  their  rooms,  to  sob  themselves  to  sleep  ;  and 
the  father  and  mother  and  doctor  alone  watched  around  the 
bed.  Oh,  what  a  watch  is  that  which  despairing  love  keeps, 


196  THE  NEW  YEAR'S  GIFT 

waiting  for  death !  Poor  Rover,  the  companion  of  Ally's 
gayer  hours,  resolutely  refused  to  be  excluded  from  the 
sick-chamber.  Stretched  under  the  little  crib,  he  watched 
with  unsleeping  eyes  every  motion  of  the  attendants,  and 
as  often  as  they  rose  to  administer  medicine,  or  change 
the  pillow,  or  bathe  the  head,  he  would  rise  also,  and  look 
anxiously  over  the  side  of  the  crib,  as  if  he  understood  all 
that  was  passing. 

About  an  hour  past  midnight,  the  child  began  to  change ; 
her  moans  became  fainter  and  fainter,  her  restless  move 
ments  ceased,  and  a  deep  and  heavy  sleep  settled  upon  her. 

The  parents  looked  wistfully  on  the  doctor.  "It  is  the 
last  change,"  he  said ;  "  she  will  probably  pass  away  before 
the  daybreak." 

Heavier  and  deeper  grew  that  sleep,  and  to  the  eye  of 
the  anxious  watchers  the  little  face  grew  paler  and  paler ; 
yet  by  degrees  the  breathing  became  regular  and  easy,  and 
a  gentle  moisture  began  to  diffuse  itself  over  the  whole  sur 
face.  A  new  hope  began  to  dawn  on  the  minds  of  the 
parents,  as  they  pointed  out  these  symptoms  to  the  doctor. 

"  All  things  are  possible  with  God,"  said  he,  in  answer 
to  the  inquiring  looks  he  met,  "  and  it  may  be  that  she  will 
yet  live." 

An  hour  more  passed,  and  the  rosy  glow  of  the  New 
Year's  morning  began  to  blush  over  the  snowy  whiteness  of 
the  landscape.  Far  off  from  the  window  could  be  seen  the 
kindling  glow  of  a  glorious  sunrise,  looking  all  the  brighter 
for  the  dark  pines  that  half  veiled  it  from  view  ;  and  now  a 
straight  and  glittering  beam  shot  from  the  east  into  the  still 
chamber.  It  fell  on  the  golden  hair  and  pale  brow  of  the 
child,  lighting  it  up  as  if  an  angel  had  smiled  on  it ;  and 
slowly  the  large  blue  eyes  unclosed,  and  gazed  dreamily 
around. 

"Ally,  Ally,"  said  the  father,  bending  over  her,  trem 
bling  with  excitement. 


THE  NEW  YEAR'S  GIFT  197 

"  You  are  going  to  have  a  New  'Ear's  p'esent,"  whispered 
the  little  one,  faintly  smiling. 

"  I  believe  from  my  heart  that  you  are,  sir !  "  said  the 
doctor,  who  stood  with  his  fingers  on  her  pulse  ;  "  she  has 
passed  through  the  crisis  of  the  disease,  and  we  may  hope." 

A  few  hours  turned  this  hope  to  glad  certainty ;  for  with 
the  elastic  rapidity  of  infant  life,  the  signs  of  returning  vigor 
began  to  multiply,  and  ere  evening  the  little  one  was  lying 
in  her  father's  arms,  answering  with  languid  smiles  to  the 
overflowing  proofs  of  tenderness  which  every  member  of  the 
family  was  showering  upon  her. 

"  See,  my  children,"  said  the  father  gently,  "  this  dear 
one  is  our  New  Year's  present.  What  can  we  render  to 
God  in  return  ?  " 


OUR    WOOD   LOT   IN   WINTER 

OUR  wood  lot !  Yes,  we  have  arrived  at  the  dignity  of 
owning  a  wood  lot,  and  for  us  simple  folk  there  is  something 
invigorating  in  the  thought.  To  OWN  even  a  small  spot  of 
our  dear  old  mother  earth  hath  in  it  a  relish  of  something 
stimulating  to  human  nature.  To  own  a  meadow,  with  all 
its  thousandfold  fringes  of  grasses,  its  broidery  of  monthly 
flowers,  and  its  outriders  of  birds,  and  bees,  and  gold-winged 
insects  —  this  is  something  that  establishes  one's  heart.  To 
own  a  clover  patch  or  a  buckwheat  field  is  like  possessing  a 
self-moving  manufactory  for  perfumes  and  sweetness  ;  but  a 
wood  lot,  rustling  with  dignified  old  trees  —  it  makes  a  man 
rise  in  his  own  esteem ;  he  might  take  off  his  hat  to  him 
self  at  the  moment  of  acquisition. 

We  do  not  marvel  that  the  land-acquiring  passion  becomes 
a  mania  among  our  farmers,  and  particularly  we  do  not  won 
der  at  a  passion  for  wood  land.  That  wide,  deep  chasm  of 
conscious  self-poverty  and  emptiness  which  lies  at  the  bot 
tom  of  every  human  heart,  making  men  crave  property  as 
something  to  add  to  one's  own  bareness,  and  to  ballast  one's 
own  specific  levity,  is  sooner  filled  by  land  than  anything 
else. 

Your  hoary  New  England  farmer  walks  over  his  acres 
with  a  grim  satisfaction.  He  sets  his  foot  down  with  a  hard 
stamp ;  here  is  reality.  No  moonshine  bank  stock !  no 
swindling  railroads  !  Here  is  his  bank,  and  there  is  no 
defaulter  here.  All  is  true,  solid,  and  satisfactory ;  he 
seems  anchored  to  this  life  by  it.  So  Pope,  with  fine  tact, 
makes  the  old  miser,  making  his  will  on  his  deathbed,  after 


OUR  WOOD  LOT  IN   WINTER  199 

parting  with  everything,  die,  clinging  to  the  possession  of 
his  land.  He  disposes  with  many  a  groan  of  this  and  that 
house,  and  this  and  that  stock  and  security ;  but  at  last  the 
manor  is  proposed  to  him. 

" '  The  manor!  hold! '  he  cried, 
'  Not  that;  I  cannot  part  with  that! '  —and  died!  " 

In  such  terms  we  discoursed  yesterday,  Herr  Professor 
and  myself,  while  jogging  along  in  an  old-fashioned  chaise 
to  inspect  a  few  acres  of  wood  lot,  the  acquisition  of  which 
had  led  us,  with  great  freshness,  into  these  reflections. 
Does  any  fair  lady  shiver  at  the  idea  of  a  drive  to  the  woods 
on  the  first  of  February  ?  Let  me  assure  her  that  in  the 
coldest  season  Nature  never  wants  her  ornaments,  full  worth 
looking  at.  See  here,  for  instance  —  let  us  stop  the  old 
chaise,  and  get  out  a  minute  to  look  at  this  brook  —  one 
of  our  last  summer's  pets.  What  is  he  doing  this  winter  ? 
Let  us  at  least  say,  "  How  do  you  do  ?  "  to  him.  Ah,  here 
he  is  !  and  he  and  Jack  Frost  together  have  been  turning 
the  little  gap  in  the  old  stone  wall,  through  which  he  leaped 
down  to  the  road,  into  a  little  grotto  of  Antiparos.  Some 
old  rough  rails  and  boards  that  dropped  over  it  are  sheathed 
in  plates  of  transparent  silver.  The  trunks  of  the  black 
alders  are  mailed  with  crystal ;  and  the  witch-hazel,  and 
yellow  osiers  fringing  its  sedgy  borders,  are  likewise  shin 
ing  through  their  glossy  covering.  Around  every  stem  that 
rises  from  the  water  is  a  glittering  ring  of  ice.  The  tags  of 
the  alder  and  the  red  berries  of  last  summer's  wild  roses 
glitter  now  like  a  lady's  pendant.  As  for  the  brook,  he  is 
wide  awake  and  joyful ;  and  where  the  roof  of  sheet  ice 
breaks  away,  you  can  see  his  yellow-brown  waters  rattling 
and  gurgling  among  the  stones  as  briskly  as  they  did  last 
July.  Down  he  springs  !  over  the  glossy-coated  stone  wall, 
throwing  new  sparkles  into  the  fairy  grotto  around  him ; 
and  widening  daily  from  melting  snows,  and  such  other 
godsends,  he  goes  chattering  off  under  yonder  mossy  stone 


200  OUR   WOOD  LOT   IN   WINTER 

bridge,  and  we  lose  sight  of  him.  It  might  be  fancy,  but  it 
seemed  that  our  watery  friend  tipped  us  a  cheery  wink  as 
he  passed,  saying,  "  Fine  weather,  sir,  and  madam ;  nice 
times  these;  and  in  April  you'll  find  us  all  right;  the 
flowers  are  making  up  their  finery  for  the  next  season  • 
there  's  to  be  a  splendid  display  in  a  month  or  two." 

Then  the  cloud  lights  of  a  wintry  sky  have  a  clear  purity 
and  brilliancy  that  no  other  months  can  rival.  The  rose 
tints,  and  the  shading  of  rose  tint  into  gold,  the  flossy,  filmy 
accumulation  of  illuminated  vapor  that  drifts  across  the  sky 
in  a  January  afternoon,  are  beauties  far  exceeding  those  of 
summer. 

Neither  are  trees,  as  seen  in  winter,  destitute  of  their 
own  peculiar  beauty.  If  it  be  a  gorgeous  study  in  summer 
time  to  watch  the  play  of  their  abundant  leafage,  we  still 
may  thank  winter  for  laying  bare  before  us  the  grand  and 
beautiful  anatomy  of  the  tree,  with  all  its  interlacing  net 
work  of  boughs,  knotted  on  each  twig  with  the  buds  of  next 
year's  promise.  The  fleecy  and  rosy  clouds  look  all  the 
more  beautiful  through  the  dark  lace  veil  of  yonder  magni 
ficent  elms  ;  and  the  down-drooping  drapery  of  yonder  willow 
hath  its  own  grace  of  outline  as  it  sweeps  the  bare  snows. 
And  these  comical  old  apple-trees,  why,  in  summer  they 
look  like  so  many  plump,  green  cushions,  one  as  much  like 
another  as  possible  ;  but  under  the  revealing  light  of  winter 
every  characteristic  twist  and  jerk  stands  disclosed. 

One  might  moralize  on  this  —  how  affliction,  which  strips 
us  of  all  ornaments  and  accessories,  and  brings  us  down 
to  the  permanent  and  solid  wood  of  our  nature,  develops 
such  wide  differences  in  people  who  before  seemed  not 
much  distinct.  But  here  !  our  pony's  feet  are  now  clink 
ing  on  the  icy  path  under  the  shadow  of  the  white  pines  of 
"our  wood  lot."  The  path  runs  in  a  deep  hollow,  and  on 
either  hand  rise  slopes  dark  and  sheltered  with  the  fragrant 
white  pine.  White  pines  are  favorites  with  us  for  many 


OUR  WOOD  LOT  IN   WINTER  201 

good  reasons.  We  love  their  balsamic  breath,  the  long, 
slender  needles  of  their  leaves,  and,  above  all,  the  constant 
sibylline  whisperings  that  never  cease  among  their  branches. 
In  summer  the  ground  beneath  them  is  paved  with  a  soft 
and  cleanly  matting  of  their  last  year's  leaves ;  and  then 
their  talking  seems  to  be  of  coolness  ever  dwelling  far  up 
in  their  fringy,  waving  hollows.  And  now,  in  winter-time, 
we  find  the  same  smooth  floor  ;  for  the  heavy  curtains  above 
shut  out  the  snow,  and  the  same  voices  above  whisper  of 
shelter  and  quiet.  "  You  are  welcome,"  they  say  ;  "  the 
north  wind  is  gone  to  sleep  ;  we  are  rocking  him  in  our  cra 
dles.  Sit  down  and  be  quiet  from  the  cold.'7  At  the  feet 
of  these  slumberous  old  pines  we  find  many  of  our  last  sum 
mer's  friends  looking  as  good  as  new.  The  small,  round- 
leafed  partridge-berry  weaves  its  viny  mat,  and  lays  out  its 
scarlet  fruit,  and  here  are  blackberry  vines  with  leaves  still 
green,  though  with  a  bluish  tint,  not  unlike  what  invades 
mortal  noses  in  such  weather.  Here,  too,  are  the  bright, 
varnished  leaves  of  the  Indian  pine,  and  the  vines  of  feath 
ery  green  of  which  our  Christmas  garlands  are  made ;  and 
here,  undaunted,  though  frozen  to  the  very  heart  this  cold 
day,  is  many  another  leafy  thing  which  we  met  last  sum 
mer  rejoicing  each  in  its  own  peculiar  flower.  What  names 
they  have  received  from  scientific  godfathers  at  the  botanic 
fount  we  know  not ;  we  have  always  known  them  by  fairy 
nicknames  of  our  own  —  the  pet  names  of  endearment 
which  lie  between  Nature's  children  and  us  in  her  domes 
tic  circle. 

There  is  something  peculiarly  sweet  to  us  about  a  certain 
mystical  dreaminess  and  obscurity  in  these  wild  wood  tribes, 
which  we  never  wish  to  have  brought  out  into  the  daylight 
of  absolute  knowledge.  Every  one  of  them  was  a  self- 
discovered  treasure  of  our  childhood,  as  much  our  own  as  if 
God  had  made  it  on  purpose  and  presented  it ;  and  it  was 
ever  a  part  of  the  joy  to  think  we  had  found  something  that 


202  OUR  WOOD   LOT  IN  WINTER 

no  one  else  knew,  and  so  musing  on  them,  we  gave  them 
names  in  our  heart.  We  search  about  amid  the  sere,  yel 
low  skeletons  of  last  summer's  ferns,  if  haply  winter  have 
forgotten  one  green  leaf  for  our  home  vase  ;  in  vain  we 
rake,  freezing  our  fingers  through  our  fur  gloves  —  there  is 
not  one.  An  icicle  has  pierced  every  heart ;  and  there 
are  no  fern  leaves  except  those  miniature  ones  which  each 
plant  is  holding  in  its  heart,  to  be  sent  up  in  next  sum 
mer's  hour  of  joy.  But  here  are  mosses  —  tufts  of  all  sorts ; 
the  white,  crisp  and  crumbling,  fair  as  winter  frostwork  ; 
and  here  the  feathery  green  of  which  French  milliners 
make  moss-rose  buds ;  and  here  the  cup-moss  —  these  we 
gather  with  some  care,  frozen  as  they  are  to  the  wintry 
earth. 

Now,  stumbling  up  this  ridge,  we  come  to  a  little  patch 
of  hemlocks,  spreading  out  their  green  wings,  and  making, 
in  the  ravine,  a  deep  shelter,  where  many  a  fresh  springing 
thing  is  standing,  and  where  we  gain  much  for  our  home 
vases.  These  pines  are  motherly  creatures.  One  can  think 
how  it  must  rejoice  the  heart  of  a  partridge  or  a  rabbit  to 
come  from  the  dry,  whistling  sweep  of  a  deciduous  forest 
under  the  home-like  shadow  of  their  branches.  "  As  for 
the  stork,  the  fir-trees  are  her  house/'  says  the  Hebrew  poet ; 
and  our  fir-trees,  this  winter,  give  shelter  to  much  small 
game.  Often,  on  the  light-fallen  snow,  I  meet  their  little 
footprints.  They  have  a  na'ive,  helpless,  innocent  appear 
ance,  these  little  tracks,  that  softens  my  heart  like  a  child's 
footprint.  Not  one  of  them  is  forgotten  of  our  Father ; 
and  therefore  I  remember  them  kindly. 

And  now  with  cold  toes  and  fingers,  and  arms  full  of 
leafy  treasures,  we  plod  our  way  back  to  the  chaise.  A 
pleasant  song  is  in  my  ears  from  this  old  wood  lot  —  it 
speaks  of  green  and  cheerful  patience  in  life's  hard  weather. 
Not  a  scowling,  sullen  endurance,  not  a  despairing,  hand- 
dropping  resignation,  but  a  heart  cheerfulness  that  holds  on 


OUR  WOOD  LOT  IN   WINTER  203 

to  every  leaf,  and  twig,  and  flower,  and  bravely  smiles  and 
keeps  green  when  frozen  to  the  very  heart,  knowing  that 
the  winter  is  but  for  a  season,  and  that  the  sunshine  and 
bird  singings  shall  return,  and  the  last  year's  dry  flower 
stalk  give  place  to  the  risen,  glorified  flower. 


THE   MOUBNING-VEIL 

"Then  in  life's  goblet  freely  press 
The  leaves  that  give  it  bitterness, 
Nor  prize  the  colored  waters  less, 
For  in  thy  darkness  and  distress 

New  light  and  strength  they  give  ! 

"And  he  who  has  not  learned  to  know    • 
How  false  its  sparkling  bubbles  show, 
How  bitter  are  the  drops  of  woe, 
With  which  its  brim  may  overflow, 
He  has  not  learned  to  live. 

LONGFELLOW. 

IT  was  sunset.  The  day  had  been  one  of  the  sultriest  of 
August.  It  would  seem  as  if  the  fierce  alembic  of  the  last 
twenty-four  hours  had  melted  it  like  the  pearl  in  the  golden 
cup  of  Cleopatra,  and  it  lay  in  the  west  a  fused  mass  of 
transparent  brightness.  The  reflection  from  the  edges  of  a 
hundred  clouds  wandered  hither  and  thither,  over  rock  and 
tree  and  flower,  giving  a  strange,  unearthly  brilliancy  to  the 
most  familiar  things. 

A  group  of  children  had  gathered  about  their  mother  in 
the  summer-house  of  a  garden  which  faced  the  sunset  sky. 
The  house  was  one  of  those  square,  stately,  wooden  struc 
tures,  white,  with  green  blinds,  in  which  of  old  times  the 
better  classes  of  New  England  delighted,  and  which  remain 
to  us  as  memorials  of  a  respectable  past.  It  stood  under 
the  arches  of  two  gigantic  elms,  and  was  flanked  on  either 
side  with  gardens  and  grounds  which  seemed  designed  on 
purpose  for  hospitality  and  family  freedom.  The  evening 
light  colored  huge  bouquets  of  petunias,  which  stood  with 
their  white  or  crimson  faces  looking  westward,  as  if  they 


THE  MOURNING-VEIL  205 

were  thinking  creatures.  It  illumined  flame-colored  ver 
benas,  and  tall  columns  of  pink  and  snowy  phloxes,  and 
hedges  of  August  roses,  making  them  radiant  as  the  flowers 
of  a  dream. 

The  group  in  the  summer-house  requires  more  particular 
attention.  The  father  and  mother,  whom  we  shall  call 
Albert  and  Olivia,  were  of  the  wealthiest  class  of  the  neigh 
boring  city,  and  had  been  induced  by  the  facility  of  rail 
road  traveling,  and  a  sensible  way  of  viewing  things,  to  fix 

their  permanent  residence  in  the  quiet  little  village  of  Q . 

Albert  had  nothing  in  him  different  from  multitudes  of 
hearty,  joyous,  healthily  constituted  men,  who  subsist  upon 
daily  newspapers,  and  find  the  world  a  most  comfortable 
place  to  live  in.  As  to  Olivia,  she  was  in  the  warm  noon 
of  life,  and  a  picture  of  vitality  and  enjoyment.  A  plump, 
firm  cheek,  a  dark  eye,  a  motherly  fullness  of  form,  spoke 
the  being  made  to  receive  and  enjoy  the  things  of  earth, 
the  warm-hearted  wife,  the  indulgent  mother,  the  hospit 
able  mistress  of  the  mansion.  It  is  true  that  the  smile  on 
the  lip  had  something  of  earthly  pride  blended  with  wo 
manly  sweetness,  —  the  pride  of  one  who  has  as  yet  known 
only  prosperity  and  success,  to  whom  no  mischance  has  yet 
shown  the  frail  basis  on  which  human  hopes  are  built.  Her 
foot  had  as  yet  trod  only  the  high  places  of  life,  but  she 
walked  there  with  a  natural  grace  and  nobleness  that  made 
every  one  feel  that  she  was  made  for  them,  and  they  for  her. 

Around  the  parents  were  gathered  at  this  moment  a 
charming  group  of  children,  who  with  much  merriment 
were  proceeding  to  undo  a  bundle  the  father  had  just 
brought  from  the  city. 

"  Here,  Rose,"  said  little  Amy,  a  blue-eyed,  flaxen-haired 
pet,  who  seemed  to  be  a  privileged  character,  "  let  me  come  ; 
don't  be  all  night  with  your  orderly  ways ;  let  me  cut  that 
string."  A  sharp  flash  of  the  scissors,  a  quick  report  of 
the  bursting  string,  and  the  package  lay  opened  to  the  little 


206  THE   MOURNING-VEIL 

marauder.  Rose  drew  back,  smiled,  and  gave  an  indulgent 
look  at  her  eager  younger  sister  and  the  two  little  ones  who 
immediately  gathered  around.  She  was  one  of  those  calm, 
thoughtful,  womanly  young  girls,  that  seem  born  for  pattern 
elder  sisters,  and  for  the  stay  and  support  of  mother's  hearts. 
She  watched  with  a  gentle,  quiet  curiosity  the  quick  and 
eager  fingers  that  soon  were  busy  in  exposing  the  mysteries 
of  the  parcel. 

"  There  ?s  a  dress  for  Rose,"  said  Amy,  triumphantly 
drawing  out  a  delicate  muslin  ;  "  I  can  always  tell  what 's 
for  her." 

"  How  ?  "  put  in  the  father,  who  stood  regarding  the  pro 
ceeding  with  that  air  of  amused  superiority  with  which  the 
wearers  of  broadcloth  look  down  on  the  mysteries  of  muslin 
and  barege. 

"  How  ?  "  said  Amy,  "  why,  because  they  look  just  like 
her.  If  I  were  to  see  that  lilac  muslin  in  China,  I  should 
say  it  was  meant  for  Rose.  Now  this  is  mine,  I  know  — 
this  bright  pink  ;  is  n't  it,  mamma  ?  No  half  shades  about 
me!" 

"  No,  indeed,"  said  her  mother  ;  "  that  is  your  greatest 
fault,  Amy." 

"  Oh,  well,  mamma,  Rose  has  enough  for  both  ;  you 
must  rub  us  together,  as  they  do  light  red  and  Prussian 
blue,  to  make  a  neutral  tint.  But  oh,  what  a  ribbon  !  oh, 
mother,  what  a  love  of  a  ribbon  !  Rose !  Rose !  look  at 
this  ribbon  !  And  oh,  those  buttons !  Fred,  I  do  believe 
they  are  for  your  new  coat !  Oh,  and  those  studs,  father, 
where  did  you  get  them  ?  What 's  in  that  box  ?  a  bracelet 
for  Rose,  I  know  !  oh,  how  beautiful !  perfectly  exquisite  ! 
And  here  —  oh  !  " 

Here  something  happened  to  check  the  volubility  of  the 
little  speaker  ;  for  as  she  hastily,  and  with  the  license  of  a 
petted  child,  pulled  the  articles  from  the  parcel,  she  was 
startled  to  find  lying  among  the  numerous  colored  tilings  a 


THE   MOURNING-VEIL  207 

black  crape  veil.  Sombre,  dark,  and  ill-omened  enough  it 
looked  there,  with  pink,  and  lilac,  and  blue,  and  glittering 
bijouterie  around  it ! 

Amy  dropped  it  with  instinctive  repugnance,  and  there 
was  a  general  exclamation,  "  Mamma,  what 's  this  ?  how 
came  it  here  ?  what  did  you  get  this  for  ?  " 

"  Strange  !  "  said  Olivia  ;  "  it  is  a  mourning-veil.  Of 
course  I  did  not  order  it.  How  it  came  in  here  nobody 
knows  j  it  must  have  been  a  mistake  of  the  clerk. " 

"  Certainly  it  is  a  mistake,'7  said  Amy  ;  "  we  have  no 
thing  to  do  with  mourning,  have  we  ?  " 

"  No,  to  be  sure  ;  what  should  we  mourn  for  ?  "  chimed 
in  little  Fred  and  Mary. 

"  What  a  dark,  ugly  thing  it  is  !  "  said  Amy,  unfolding 
and  throwing  it  over  her  head ;  "  how  dismal  it  must  be  to 
see  the  world  through  such  a  veil  as  this  !  " 

"  And  yet  till  one  has  seen  the  world  through  a  veil  like 
that,  one  has  never  truly  lived,"  said  another  voice,  joining 
in  the  conversation. 

"  Ah,  Father  Pay  son,  are  you  there  ?  "  said  two  or  three 
voices  at  once. 

Father  Payson  was  the  minister  of  the  village,  and  their 
nearest  neighbor ;  and  not  only  their  nearest  neighbor,  but 
their  nearest  friend.  In  the  afternoon  of  his  years,  life's 
day  with  him  now  stood  at  that  hour  when,  though  the 
shadows  fall  eastward,  yet  the  colors  are  warmer,  and  the 
songs  of  the  birds  sweeter,  than  even  in  its  jubilant  morn 
ing. 

God  sometimes  gives  to  good  men  a  guileless  and  holy 
second  childhood,  in  which  the  soul  becomes  childlike,  not 
childish,  and  the  faculties  in  full  fruit  and  ripeness  are  mel 
low  without  sign  of  decay.  This  is  that  songful  land  of 
Beulah,  where  they  who  have  traveled  manfully  the  Chris 
tian  way  abide  awhile  to  show  the  world  a  perfected  man 
hood.  Life,  with  its  battles  and  its  sorrows,  lies  far  behind 


208  THE   MOURNING-VEIL 

them  ;  the  soul  has  thrown  off  its  armor,  and  sits  in  an 
evening  undress  of  calm  and  holy  leisure.  Thrice  blessed 
the  family  or  neighborhood  that  numbers  among  it  one  of 
these  not  yet  ascended  saints  !  Gentle  are  they  and  toler 
ant,  apt  to  play  with  little  children,  easy  to  be  pleased  with 
simple  pleasures,  and  with  a  pitying  wisdom  guiding  those 
who  err.  New  England  has  been  blessed  in  numbering 
many  such  among  her  country  pastors  ;  and  a  spontaneous, 
instinctive  deference  honors  them  with  the  title  of  Father. 

Father  Payson  was  the  welcome  inmate  of  every  family 
in  the  village,  the  chosen  friend  even  of  the  young  and 
thoughtless.  He  had  stories  for  children,  jokes  for  the 
young,  and  wisdom  for  all.  He  "  talked  good,"  as  the 
phrase  goes,  —  not  because  he  was  the  minister,  but  because, 
being  good,  he  could  not  help  it ;  yet  his  words,  uncon 
sciously  to  himself,  were  often  parables,  because  life  to  him 
had  become  all  spiritualized,  and  he  saw  sacred  meanings 
under  worldly  things. 

The  children  seized  him  lovingly  by  either  hand  and 
seated  him  in  the  arbor. 

"  Is  n't  it  strange,"  said  Amy,  "  to  see  this  ugly  black 
thing  among  all  these  bright  colors  ?  such  a  strange  mistake 
in  the  clerk  !  " 

"  If  one  were  inclined  to  be  superstitious,"  said  Albert, 
"  he  might  call  this  an  omen." 

"  What  did  you  mean,  sir,"  asked  Hose,  quietly  seating 
herself  at  his  feet,  "  by  '  seeing  life  through  this  veil '  ?  " 

"  It  was  a  parable,  my  daughter,"  he  said,  laying  his 
hand  on  her  head. 

"  I  never  have  had  any  deep  sorrow,"  said  Olivia  mus 
ingly  ;  "we  have  been  favored  ones  hitherto.  But  why 
did  you  say  one  must  see  the  world  through  such  a  medium 
as  this  ?  " 

"  Sorrow  is  God's  school,"  said  the  old  man.  "  Even 
God's  own  Son  was  not  made  perfect  without  it ;  though  a 


THE   MOURNING-VEIL  209 

son,  yet  learned  he  obedience  by  the  things  that  he  suffered. 
Many  of  the  brightest  virtues  are  like  stars  ;  there  must  be 
night  or  they  cannot  shine.  Without  suffering,  there  could 
be  no  fortitude,  no  patience,  no  compassion,  no  sympathy. 
Take  all  sorrow  out  of  life,  and  you  take  away  all  richness 
and  depth  and  tenderness.  Sorrow  is  the  furnace  that  melts 
selfish  hearts  together  in  love.  Many  are  hard  and  incon 
siderate,  not  because  they  lack  capability  of  feeling,  but  be 
cause  the  vase  that  holds  the  sweet  waters  has  never  been 
broken." 

"  Is  it,  then,  an  imperfection  and  misfortune  never  to  have 
suffered  ?  "  said  Olivia. 

Father  Payson  looked  down.  Rose  was  looking  into  his 
face.  There  was  a  bright,  eager,  yet  subdued  expression  in 
her  eyes  that  struck  him  ;  it  had  often  struck  him  before  in 
the  village  church.  It  was  as  if  his  words  had  awakened 
an  internal  angel,  that  looked  fluttering  out  behind  them. 
Rose  had  been  from  childhood  one  of  those  thoughtful,  lis 
tening  children  with  whom  one  seems  to  commune  without 
words.  We  spend  hours  talking  with  them,  and  fancy  they 
have  said  many  things  to  us,  which,  on  reflection,  we  find 
have  been  said  only  with  their  silent  answering  eyes.  Those 
who  talk  much  often  reply  to  you  less  than  those  who  silently 
and  thoughtfully  listen.  And  so  it  came  to  pass  that,  on 
account  of  this  quietly  absorbent  nature,  Rose  had  grown  to 
her  parents'  hearts  with  a  peculiar  nearness.  Eighteen  sum 
mers  had  perfected  her  beauty.  The  miracle  of  the  growth 
and  perfection  of  a  human  body  and  soul  never  waxes  old  ; 
parents  marvel  at  it  in  every  household  as  if  a  child  had 
never  grown  before  ;  and  so  Olivia  and  Albert  looked  on 
their  fair  Rose  daily  with  a  restful  and  trusting  pride. 

At  this  moment  she  laid  her  hand  on  Father  Payson's 
knee,  and  said  earnestly,  "  Ought  we  to  pray  for  sorrow, 
then  ?  " 

"  Oh,  no,  no,  no  !  "  interrupted  Olivia,  with  an  instinc- 


210  THE   MOURNING- VEIL 

tive  shudder,  —  such  a  shudder  as  a  warm,  earnest,  prosper 
ous  heart  always  gives  as  the  shadow  of  the  grave  falls 
across  it,  —  "  don't  say  yes  !  " 

"  I  do  not  say  we  should  pray  for  it,"  said  Father  Pay- 
son  ;  "  yet  the  Master  says,  '  Blessed  are  they  that  mourn/ 
not  (  Blessed  are  they  that  prosper.'  So  heaven  and  earth 
differ  in  their  judgments." 

"  Ah,  me  !  "  said  Olivia ;  "  I  am  afraid  I  have  not  cour 
age  to  wish  to  be  among  the  blessed." 

"  Well,"  said  Albert,  whom  the  gravity  of  the  discussion 
somewhat  disturbed,  "  let  us  not  borrow  trouble  ;  time 
enough  to  think  of  it  when  it  happens.  Come,  the  dew  is 
falling,  let  us  go  in.  I  want  to  show  Father  Payson  some 
peaches  that  will  tempt  his  Christian  graces  to  envy.  Come, 
Rose,  gather  up  here." 

Rose,  in  a  few  moments,  gathered  the  parcel  together, 
and  quietly  flitted  before  them  into  the  house. 

"  Now,"  said  Albert,  "  you  '11  see  that  girl  will  have 
everything  quietly  tucked  away  in  just  the  right  place  ;  not 
a  word  said.  She  is  a  born  housewife  ;  it 's  in  her,  as  much 
as  it  is  in  a  pointer  to  show  game." 

"  Rose  is  my  right  hand,"  said  Olivia  ;  "  I  should  be  lost 
without  her." 

Whence  comes  it  that,  just  on  the  verge  of  the  great 
crises  and  afflictions  of  life,  words  are  often  spoken  that,  to 
afterview,  seem  to  have  had  a  prophetic  meaning  ?  So 
often  do  we  hear  people  saying,  "  Ah,  the  very  day  before 
I  heard  of  this  or  that,  we  were  saying  so  and  so !  "  It 
would  seem  sometimes  as  if  the  soul  felt  itself  being  drawn 
within  the  dark  sphere  of  a  coming  evil,  of  which  as  yet  no 
thing  outward  tells.  Then  the  thoughts  and  conversation 
flow  in  an  almost  prophetic  channel,  which  a  coming  future 
too  well  interprets. 

The  evening  passed  cheerfully  with  our  friends,  notwith 
standing  the  grave  conversation  in  the  arbor.  The  mourn- 


THE  MOUKNING-VEIL  211 

ing-veil  was  laid  away  in  a  drawer  along  with  many  of  its 
brilliant  companions,  and  with  it  the  thoughts  it  had  sug 
gested  ;  and  the  merry  laugh  ringing  from  the  half -open 
parlor-door  showed  that  Father  Payson  was  no  despiser  of 
the  command  to  rejoice  with  them  that  do  rejoice.  Rose 
played  and  sung,  the  children  danced,  and  the  mirth  was 
prolonged  till  a  late  hour  in  the  evening.  Olivia  and  Albert 
were  lingering  in  the  parlor  after  the  departure  of  the 
family,  busy  in  shutting  windows,  setting  back  chairs,  and 
attending  to  all  the  last  duties  of  orderly  householders.  A 
sudden  shriek  startled  them  ;  such  a  shriek  as,  once  heard, 
is  never  forgotten.  With  an  answering  cry  of  horror,  they 
rushed  up  the  stairs.  The  hall  lamp  had  been  extinguished, 
but  the  passage  and  staircase  were  red  with  a  broad  glare 
from  the  open  door  of  the  nursery.  A  moment  more  showed 
them  the  drapery  of  the  bed  in  which  their  youngest  child 
was  sleeping  all  in  flames  ;  then  they  saw  a  light  form  tear 
ing  down  the  blazing  curtains. 

"  Oh,  Rose  !  Rose  !  take  care,  for  God's  sake  !  your  dress  ! 
you  '11  kill  yourself !  oh,  God  help  us  !  " 

There  were  a  few  moments  —  awful  moments  of  struggle 
—  when  none  knew  or  remembered  what  they  did ;  a  mo 
ment  more  and  Rose  lay  panting  in  her  father's  arms,  envel 
oped  in  a  thick  blanket  which  he  had  thrown  around  her 
burning  nightdress.  The  fire  was  extinguished,  the  babe 
lay  unawakened,  and  only  the  dark  flecks  of  tinder  scat 
tered  over  the  bed,  and  the  trampled  mass  on  the  floor,  told 
what  had  been.  But  Rose  had  breathed  the  hot  breath  of 
the  flame,  deadly  to  human  life,  and  no  water  could  quench 
that  inward  fire. 

A  word  serves  to  explain  all.  The  child's  nurse  had 
carelessly  set  a  lamp  too  near  the  curtains,  and  the  night 
breeze  had  wafted  them  into  the  flame.  The  apartment  of 
Rose  opened  into  the  nursery,  and  as  she  stood  in  her  night 
dress  before  her  mirror,  arranging  her  hair,  she  saw  the 


212  THE   MOURNING-VEIL 

flashing  of  the  flame,  and,  in  the  one  idea  of  saving  her  little 
sister,  forgot  every  other.  That  act  of  self-f orgetf ulness  was 
her  last  earthly  act ;  a  few  short  hours  of  patient  suffering 
were  all  that  remained  to  her.  Peacefully  as  she  had  lived 
she  died,  looking  tenderly  on  her  parents  out  of  her  large 
blue  eyes,  and  only  intent  to  soothe  their  pain. 

"  Yes,  I  suffer,"  she  said,  "  but  only  a  short  pain.  We 
must  all  suffer  something.  My  Father  thinks  a  very  little 
enough  for  me.  I  have  had  such  a  happy  life,  I  might  bear 
just  a  little  pain  at  the  last." 

A  little  later  her  mind  seemed  to  wander.  "  Mamma, 
mamma/'  she  said  hurriedly,  "  I  put  the  things  all  away  ;  the 
lilac  muslin  and  the  barege.  Mamma,  that  veil,  the  mourn 
ing-veil,  is  in  the  drawer.  Oh,  mamma,  that  veil  was  for 
you  ;  don't  refuse  it ;  our  Father  sends  it,  and  he  knows 
best.  Perhaps  you  will  see  heaven  through  that  veil.'7 

It  is  appalling  to  think  how  near  to  the  happiest  and 
most  prosperous  scene  of  life  stands  the  saddest  despair.  All 
homes  are  haunted  with  awful  possibilities,  for  whose  real 
ization  no  array  of  threatening  agents  is  required,  —  no  light 
ning,  or  tempest,  or  battle  ;  a  peaceful  household  lamp,  a  gust 
of  perfumed  evening  air,  a  false  step  in  a  moment  of  gayety, 
a  draught  taken  by  mistake,  a  match  overlooked  or  mislaid,  a 
moment's  oversight  in  handling  a  deadly  weapon,  —  and  the 
whole  scene  of  life  is  irretrievably  changed !  It  was  but 
a  day  after  the  scene  in  the  arbor,  and  all  was  mourning 
in  the  so  lately  happy,  hospitable  house  ;  everybody  looked 
through  tears.  There  were  subdued  breathings,  a  low  mur 
mur,  as  of  many  listeners,  a  voice  of  prayer,  and  the  wail  of 
a  funeral  hymn,  —  and  then  the  heavy  tread  of  bearers,  as, 
beneath  the  black  pall,  she  was  carried  over  the  threshold  of 
her  home,  never  to  return. 

And  Olivia  and  Albert  came  forth  behind  their  dead. 
The  folds  of  the  dark  veil  seemed  a  refuge  for  the  mother's 
sorrow.  But  how  did  the  flowers  of  home,  the  familiar  elms, 


THE   MOUKNING-VEIL  213 

the  distant  smiling  prospect  look  through  its  gloomy  folds, 
—  emblem  of  the  shadow  which  had  fallen  between  her  heart 
and  life  ?  When  she  looked  at  the  dark  moving  hearse,  she 
wondered  that  the  sun  still  shone,  that  birds  could  sing,  and 
that  even  her  own  flowers  could  be  so  bright. 

Ah,  mother  !  the  world  had  been  just  as  full  of  sorrow 
the  day  before  ;  the  air  as  full  of  "  farewells  to  the  dying 
and  mournings  for  the  dead  ;  "  but  thou  knewest  it  not ! 
Now  the  outer  world  comes  to  thee  through  the  mourning 
veil! 

But  after  the  funeral  comes  life  again,  —  hard,  cold,  inex 
orable  life,  knocking  with  business-like  sound  at  the  mourner's 
door,  obtruding  its  commonplace  pertinacity  on  the  dull 
ear  of  sorrow.  The  world  cannot  wait  for  us ;  the  world 
knows  no  leisure  for  tears  ;  it  moves  onward,  and  drags 
along  with  its  motion  the  weary  and  heavy-laden  who  would 
fain  rest.  Olivia  would  have  buried  herself  in  her  sorrows. 
There  are  those  who  refuse  to  be  comforted.  The  condolence 
of  friends  seems  only  a  mockery ;  and  truly,  nothing  so  shows 
the  emptiness  and  poverty  of  human  nature  as  its  efforts  at 
condolence. 

Father  Payson,  however,  was  a  visitor  who  would  not  be 
denied ;  there  was  something  of  gentle  authority  in  his  white 
hairs  that  might  not  be  resisted.  Old,  and  long-schooled  in 
sorrow,  his  heart  many  times  broken  in  past  years,  he  knew 
all  the  ways  of  mourning.  His  was  no  official  commonplace 
about  "  afflictive  dispensations."  He  came*  first  with  that 
tender  and  reverent  silence  with  which  the  man  acquainted 
with  grief  approaches  the  divine  mysteries  of  sorrow ;  and 
from  time  to  time  he  cast  on  the  troubled  waters  words, 
dropped  like  seeds,  not  for  present  fruitfulness,  but  to  ger 
minate  after  the  floods  had  subsided.  He  watched  beside 
a  soul  in  affliction  as  a  mother  waits  on  the  crisis  of  a  fever 
whose  turning  is  to  be  for  life  or  for  death  ;  for  he  well 
knew  that  great  sorrows  never  leave  us  as  they  find  us ;  that 


214  THE  MOURNING-VEIL 

the  broken  spirit,  ill  set,  grows  callous  and  distorted  ever 
after.  He  had  wise  patience  with  every  stage  of  sorrow  ; 
he  knew  that  at  first  the  soul  is  blind,  and  deaf,  and  dumb. 
He  was  not  alarmed  when  returning  vitality  showed  itself 
only  in  moral  spasms  and  convulsions  ;  for  in  all  great  griefs 
come  hours  of  conflict,  when  the  soul  is  tempted,  and  com 
plaining,  murmuring,  dark,  skeptical  thoughts  are  whirled 
like  withered  leaves  through  all  its  desolate  chambers. 

"  What  have  I  learned  by  looking  through  this  veil  ?  " 
said  Olivia  to  him  bitterly,  one  day  when  they  were  coming 
out  of  a  house  where  they  had  been  visiting  a  mourning 
family.  "  I  was  trusting  in  God  as  an  indulgent  Father  ; 
life  seemed  beautiful  to  me  in  the  light  of  His  goodness ;  now 
I  see  only  His  inflexible  severity.  I  never  knew  before 
how  much  mourning  and  sorrow  there  had  been  even  in  this 
little  village.  There  is  scarcely  a  house  where  something 
dreadful  has  not  at  some  time  happened.  How  many  fam 
ilies  here  have  been  called  to  mourning  since  we  have  !  I 
have  not  taken  up  a  paper  in  which  I  have  not  seen  a  record 
of  two  or  three  accidental  deaths  j  some  of  them  even  more 
bitter  and  cruel  than  what  has  befallen  us.  I  read  this 
morning  of  a  poor  washerwoman,  whose  house  was  burned, 
and  all  her  children  consumed,  while  she  was  away  working 
for  her  bread.  I  read  the  other  day  of  a  blind  man  whose 
only  son  was  drowned  in  his  very  presence,  while  he  could 
do  nothing  to  help  him.  I  was  visiting  yesterday  that  poor 
dressmaker  whom  you  know.  She  has  by  toil  and  pains 
been  educating  a  fine  and  dutiful  son.  He  is  smitten  down 
with  hopeless  disease,  while  her  idiot  child,  who  can  do  no 
body  any  good,  is  spared.  Ah,  this  mourning-veil  has  in 
deed  opened  my  eyes  ;  but  it  has  taught  me  to  add  all  the 
sorrows  of  the  world  to  my  own  ;  and  can  I  believe  in  God's 
love  ?  " 

"  Daughter,"  said  the  old  man,  "  I  am  not  ignorant  of 
these  things.  I  have  buried  seven  children ;  I  have  buried 


THE   MOURNING-VEIL  215 

my  wife ;  and  God  has  laid  on  me  in  my  time  reproach, 
and  controversy,  and  contempt.  Each  cross  seemed,  at  the 
time,  heavier  than  the  others.  Each  in  its  day  seemed  to  be 
what  I  least  could  bear  ;  and  I  would  have  cried, (  Anything 
but  this !  '  And  yet,  now  when  I  look  back,  I  cannot  see 
one  of  these  sorrows  that  has  not  been  made  a  joy  to  me. 
With  every  one  some  perversity  or  sin  has  been  subdued, 
some  chain  unbound,  some  good  purpose  perfected.  God 
has  taken  my  loved  ones,  but  he  has  given  me  love.  He 
has  given  me  the  power  of  submission  and  of  consolation ; 
and  I  have  blessed  him  many  times  in  my  ministry  for  all 
I  have  suffered,  for  by  it  I  have  stayed  up  many  that  were 
ready  to  perish." 

"Ah,"  said  Olivia,  "you  indeed  have  reason  to  be  com 
forted,  because  you  can  see  in  yourself  the  fruit  of  your  sor 
rows  ;  but  I  am  not  improving ;  I  am  only  crushed  and 
darkened,  —  not  amended." 

"  Have  patience  with  thyself,  child  ;  weeping  must  en 
dure  for  a  night ;  all  comes  not  at  once.  '  No  trial  for  the 
present  seemeth  joyous ; ?  but  '  afterwards  it  yieldeth  the 
peaceable  fruit ;  '  —  have  faith  in  this  afterwards.  Some 
one  says  that  it  is  not  in  the  tempest  one  walks  the  beach 
to  look  for  the  treasures  of  wrecked  ships ;  but  when  the 
storm  is  past  we  find  pearls  and  precious  stones  washed 
ashore.  Are  there  not  even  now  some  of  these  in  your 
path  ?  Is  not  the  love  between  you  and  your  husband 
deeper  and  more  intimate  since  this  affliction  ?  Do  you  not 
love  your  other  children  more  tenderly  ?  Did  you  not  tell 
me  that  you  had  thought  on  the  sorrows  of  every  house  in 
this  village  ?  Courage,  my  child  !  that  is  a  good  sign.  Once, 
as  you  read  the  papers,  you  thought  nothing  of  those  who 
lost  friends ;  now  you  notice  and  feel.  Take  the  sorrows 
of  others  to  your  heart ;  they  shall  widen  and  deepen  it. 
Ours  is  a  religion  of  sorrow.  The  Captain  of  our  salvation 
was  made  perfect  through  suffering ;  our  Father  is  the  God 


216  THE   MOURNING-VEIL 

of  all  consolation ;  our  Teacher  is  named  the  Comforter ; 
and  all  other  mysteries  are  swallowed  up  in  the  mystery  of 
the  Divine  sorrow.  '  In  all  our  afflictions  He  is  afflicted.' 
God  refuseth  not  to  suffer ;  — shall  we  ?  " 

There  is  no  grave  so  desolate  that  flowers  will  not  at  last 
spring  on  it.  Time  passed  with  Albert  and  Olivia  with 
healing  in  its  wings.  The  secret  place  of  tears  became  first 
a  temple  of  prayer,  and  afterwards  of  praise  ;  and  the  heavy 
cloud  was  remembered  by  the  flowers  that  sprung  up  after 
the  rain.  The  vacant  chair  in  the  household  circle  had 
grown  to  be  a  tender  influence,  not  a  harrowing  one ;  and 
the  virtues  of  the  lost  one  seemed  to  sow  themselves  like 
the  scattered  seeds  of  a  fallen  flower,  and  to  spring  up  in 
the  hearts  of  the  surviving  ones.  More  tender  and  more 
blessed  is  often  the  brooding  influence  of  the  sacred  dead 
than  the  words  of  the  living. 

Olivia  became  known  in  the  abodes  of  sorrow,  and  a  deep 
power  seemed  given  her  to  console  the  suffering  and  dis 
tressed.  A  deeper  power  of  love  sprung  up  within  her  ; 
and  love,  though  born  of  sorrow,  ever  brings  peace  with  it. 
Many  were  the  hearts  that  reposed  on  her ;  many  the  wan 
dering  that  she  reclaimed,  the  wavering  that  she  upheld, 
the  desolate  that  she  comforted.  As  a  soul  in  heaven  may 
look  back  on  earth,  and  smile  at  its  past  sorrows,  so,  even 
here,  it  may  rise  to  a  sphere  where  it  may  look  down  on  the 
storm  that  once  threatened  to  overwhelm  it. 

It  was  on  the  afternoon  of  just  such  another  summer  day 
as  we  have  described  at  the  opening  of  our  story,  that 
Olivia  was  in  her  apartment,  directing  the  folding  and  lay 
ing  away  of  mourning-garments.  She  took  up  the  dark 
veil  and  looked  on  it  kindly,  as  on  a  faithful  friend.  How 
much  had  she  seen  and  learned  behind  the  refuge  of  its  shel 
tering  folds  !  She  turned  her  thoughts  within  herself.  She 
was  calm  once  more,  and  happy,  —  happy  with  a  wider  and 
steadier  basis  than  ever  before.  A  new  world  seemed  opened 


THE   MOURNING-VEIL  217 

within  her;  and  with  a  heart  raised  in  thankfulness  she 
placed  the  veil  among  her  most  sacred  treasures. 

Yes,  there  by  the  smiling  image  of  the  lost  one,  by  the 
curls  of  her  glossy  hair,  by  the  faded  flowers  taken  from 
her  bier,  was  laid  in  solemn  thankfulness  the  Mourning- 
Veil. 


NEW  ENGLAND  MINISTEBS 

DR.  SPRAGUE,  of  Albany,  has  added  to  the  literature  of 
our  country  two  large  octavo  volumes,  containing  biographi 
cal  accounts  of  the  Congregational  clergy  of  New  England, 
from  its  earliest  settlement  until  the  year  1841.  The  book 
has  been  for  the  most  part  compiled  from  letters  furnished 
by  different  individuals,  who,  either  through  personal  know 
ledge  or  through  tradition,  had  the  most  intimate  acquaint 
ance  with  the  subjects  of  which  they  wrote.  The  char 
acters  here  sketched,  though  perfectly  individual,  are  in 
so  great  a  degree  the  result  of  peculiar  political  influences, 
that  it  would  be  difficult  to  suppose  their  existence  elsewhere 
than  in  New  England.  We  have  therefore  chosen  this  book 
as  a  kind  of  standpoint  from  which  to  take  a  glance  at  the 
New  England  clergy  and  pulpit.  The  earliest  constitution 
of  government  in  New  England  was  a  theocracy ;  it  was 
the  realization  of  Arnold's  idea  of  the  identity  of  Church 
and  State.  Under  it  the  clergy  had  peculiar  powers  and 
privileges,  which,  it  is  but  fair  to  say,  they  turned  to  the 
advantage  of  the  Commonwealth  more  than  has  generally 
been  the  case  with  any  privileged  order. 

A  time,  however,  came  when  the  democratic  element, 
which  these  men  themselves  had  fostered,  worked  out  its 
logical  results,  by  depriving  them  of  all  special  immunities, 
and  leaving  them,  like  any  other  citizens,  to  make  their 
way  by  pure  force  of  character,  and  to  be  rated,  like  other 
men,  simply  for  what  they  were  and  what  they  could  do. 
It  is  creditable  to  the  intelligence  and  shrewdness  of  this 
body  of  men  that  the  more  far-sighted  among  them  received 


NEW   ENGLAND   MINISTERS  219 

this  change  with  satisfaction ;  that  they  were  such  uncom 
monly  fair  logicians  as  to  be  willing  to  accept  the  direct  in 
ference  from  principles  which  they  had  been  foremost  to 
inculcate,  and,  like  men  of  strong  mind  and  clear  conscience, 
were  not  afraid  to  rest  their  claim  to  influence  and  deference 
on  the  manfulness  with  which  they  should  strive  to  deserve 
them. 

Dr.  Sprague's  book  contains  pictures  of  life  under  both 
the  old  regime  and  the  new.  The  following  extract  from 
the  venerable  Josiah  Quincy's  recollections  of  the  Rev.  Mr. 
French,  of  Andover,  is  interesting,  as  an  illustration  of  the 
olden  times. 

"  Mrs.  Dowse,  my  maternal  aunt,  has  often  related  to  me 
her  pride  and  delight  at  visiting  at  the  Rev.  Mr.  Phillips', 
her  paternal  grandfather's  house,  when  a  child ;  which  was 
interesting  as  a  statement  of  the  manners  of  those  early 
times  in  Massachusetts,  before  the  sceptre  of  worldly  power, 
which  the  first  settlers  of  the  Colony  had  placed  in  the 
hands  of  the  clergy,  had  been  broken.  The  period  was 
about  between  1760  and  the  Revolution.  The  parsonage 
at  Andover  was  situated  about  two  or  three  hundred  rods 
from  the  meeting-house,  which  was  three  stories  high,  of 
immense  dimensions,  far  greater,  I  should  think,  than  those 
of  any  meeting-houses  in  these  anti-church-going,  degenerate 
times.  It  was  on  a  hill,  slightly  elevated  above  the  par 
sonage,  so  that  all  the  flock  could  see  the  pastor  as  he  issued 
from  it. 

"  Before  the  time  of  service,  the  congregation  gradually 
assembled  in  early  season,  coming  on  foot  or  on  horseback, 
the  ladies  behind  their  lords  or  brothers,  or  one  another,  on 
pillions,  so  that  before  the  time  of  service  the  whole  space 
before  the  meeting-house  was  filled  with  a  waiting,  respect 
ful,  and  expecting  multitude.  At  the  moment  of  service 
the  pastor  issued  from  his  mansion  with  Bible  and  manu 
script  sermon  under  his  arm,  with  his  wife  leaning  on  one 


220  NEW    ENGLAND   MINISTERS 

arm,  flanked  by  his  negro  man  on  his  side,  as  his  wife  was 
by  her  negro  woman,  the  little  negroes  being  distributed 
according  to  their  sex  by  the  side  of  their  respective  parents. 
Then  followed  every  other  member  of  the  family  according 
to  age  and  rank,  making  often,  with  family  visitants,  some 
what  of  a  formidable  procession.  As  soon  as  it  appeared 
the  congregation,  as  if  moved  by  one  spirit,  began  to  move 
towards  the  door  of  the  church ;  and  before  the  procession 
reached  it,  all  were  in  their  places. 

"  As  soon  as  the  pastor  entered  the  church,  the  whole  con 
gregation  rose  and  stood  until  the  pastor  was  in  the  pulpit 
and  his  family  seated,  —  until  which  was  done  the  whole 
assembly  continued  standing.  At  the  close  of  the  service 
the  congregation  stood  until  he  and  his  family  had  left  the 
church,  before  any  one  moved  towards  the  door. 

"  Forenoon  and  afternoon  the  same  course  of  proceeding 
was  had,  expressive  of  the  reverential  relation  in  which  the 
people  acknowledged  that  they  stood  towards  their  clergy 
man. 

"  Such  was  the  account  given  me  by  Mrs.  Dowse  in  rela 
tion  to  times  previous  to  my  birth,  and  which  I  relate  as 
her  narrative,  and  not  as  part  of  my  recollections.  The 
procession  from  the  parsonage,  the  disappearance  of  the 
people  on  the  appearance  of  the  procession,  and  that  their 
pastor  was  received  with  every  mark  of  decorum  and  respect, 
I  well  remember,  but  of  their  rising  at  his  entrance  and 
standing  after  the  service  until  he  had  departed,  I  have  no 
recollection  ;  my  time  was  almost  twenty  years  after  that 
narrated  by  Mrs.  Dowse.  During  that  period  the  Revolu 
tion  had  commenced." 

Some  might  think  it  an  advantage,  if  more  of  the  deco 
rum  and  reverence  of  such  a  state  of  society  had  been  pre 
served  to  our  day  ;  for  this  respect  paid  to  the  minister  was 
but  part  of  a  general  and  all-pervading  system.  Children 
were  more  reverential  to  their  parents,  scholars  to  their 


NEW    ENGLAND   MINISTERS  221 

teachers,  the  people  to  their  magistrates.  A  want  of  rever 
ence  threatens  now  to  become  the  besetting  sin  of  America, 
whether  young  or  old. 

The  clergy  of  New  England  have,  as  a  body,  been  dis 
tinguished  for  a  rare  union  of  the  speculative  and  the  prac 
tical.  In  both  points  they  have  been  so  remarkable,  that 
in  observing  the  great  development  of  either  of  these  quali 
ties  by  itself  one  would  naturally  suppose  that  there  was  no 
room  for  the  other. 

Generally  speaking,  they  were  rural  pastors,  —  living  on 
salaries  so  small  as  to  afford  hardly  a  nominal  support ;  and 
in  order  to  bring  up  their  families  and  give  their  sons  a 
college  education,  it  was  necessary  to  understand  fully  the 
practical  savoir  faire.  Accordingly,  they  farmed  and  gar 
dened,  and  often  took  young  people  into  their  families  to 
educate,  and  in  these  ways  eked  out  a  subsistence.  It  is 
related  of  the  venerable  Moses  Hallock,  that  he  educated 
in  his  own  family,  during  his  ministerial  lifetime,  three 
hundred  young  people,  of  whom  thirty  were  females.  One 
hundred  and  thirty-two  of  these  he  fitted  for  college ;  fifty 
became  ministers,  and  six  foreign  missionaries. 

Some  of  the  clergy  gained  such  an  acquaintance  with  the 
practice  of  medicine  as  to  be  able  sometimes  to  unite  the 
offices  of  physician  of  the  body  and  of  the  soul ;  and  not 
unfrequently  a  general  knowledge  of  law  enabled  the  pastor 
to  be  the  worldly  as  well  as  the  spiritual  counselor  of  his 
people.  A  striking  case  in  point  is  that  of  the  venerable 
Parson  Eaton,  who  resided  in  a  lonely  seafaring  district  on 
the  coast  of  Maine,  and  preached  to  a  congregation  who 
lived  the  amphibious  life  of  farmers  and  fishermen.  The 
town  of  Harpswell,  where  he  ministered,  "  is  a  narrow  pro 
jection  of  ten  miles  southward  into  Casco  Bay,  on  both  sides 
of  which  it  comprises  within  its  incorporated  limits  several 
islands,  some  of  them  of  considerable  size  and  well  inhabited. 
In  his  pastoral  visits  and  labors,  the  clergyman  was  often 


222  NEW   ENGLAND   MINISTERS 

obliged  to  ride  several  miles,  and  then  cross  the  inlets  of 
the  sea,  to  preach  a  lecture  or  to  minister  comfort  or  aid  to 
some  sick  or  suffering  parishioner.  In  addition  to  his  cleri 
cal  duties,  Mr.  Eaton,  having  experience  and  discernment 
in  the  more  common  forms  of  disease,  was  generally  applied 
to  in  sickness ;  and  he  usually  carried  with  him  a  lancet 
and  the  more  common  and  simple  medicines.  If  a  case 
was  likely  to  baffle  his  skill,  he  advised  his  patient  to  send 
for  a  regular  physician.  His  admirable  sense,  moreover, 
and  his  education  fitted  him  to  render  aid  and  counsel  in 
matters  of  controversy  ;  so  that  he  often  acted  as  an  umpire, 
and  very  often  to  the  settling  of  disputes.  Seldom  did  his 
people  consult  a  lawyer ;  and  it  is  even  said  that,  at  the 
time  of  his  death,  most  of  the  wills  in  the  town  were  in  his 
handwriting.'7 

It  is  a  singular  thing,  that  the  preaching  and  the  bent 
of  mind  of  a  set  of  men  so  intensely  practical  should  have 
been  at  the  same  time  intensely  speculative.  Nowhere  in 
the  world,  unless  perhaps  in  Scotland,  have  merely  specu 
lative  questions  excited  the  strong  and  engrossing  interest 
among  the  common  people  that  they  have  in  New  Eng 
land.  Every  man,  woman,  and  child  was  more  or  less  a 
theologian.  The  minister,  while  he  ground  his  scythe  or 
sharpened  his  axe  or  laid  stone  fence,  was  inwardly  grinding 
and  hammering  on  those  problems  of  existence  which  are  as 
old  as  man,  and  which  Christian  and  heathen  have  alike 
pondered.  The  Germans  call  the  whole  New  England  the 
ology  rationalistic,  in  distinction  from  traditional. 

There  are  minds  which  are  capable  of  receiving  certain 
series  of  theological  propositions  without  even  an  effort  at 
comparison,  without  a  perception  of  contradiction  or  incon- 
sequency,  without  an  effort  at  harmonizing.  Such,  how 
ever,  were  not  the  New  England  ministers.  With  them 
predestination  must  be  made  to  harmonize  with  free  will ; 
the  Divine  entire  efficiency  with  human  freedom ;  the 


NEW   ENGLAND   MINISTERS  223 

existence  of  sin  with  the  Divine  benevolence  ;  —  and  at  it 
they  went  with  stout  hearts,  as  men  work  who  are  not  in 
the  habit  of  being  balked  in  their  undertakings.  Hence 
the  Edwardses,  the  Hopkinses,  the  Emmonses,  with  all 
their  various  schools  and  followers,  who,  leviathan-like, 
have  made  the  theological  deep  of  New  England  to  boil  like 
a  pot,  and  the  agitation  of  whose  course  remains  to  this 
day. 

It  is  a  mark  of  a  shallow  mind  to  scorn  these  theological 
wrestlings  and  surgings ;  they  have  had  in  them  something 
even  sublime.  They  were  always  bounded  and  steadied  by 
the  most  profound  reverence  for  God  and  his  word ;  and 
they  have  constituted  in  New  England  the  strong  mental 
discipline  needed  by  a  people  who  were  an  absolute  demo 
cracy.  The  Sabbath  teaching  of  New  England  has  been  a 
regular  intellectual  drill  as  well  as  a  devotional  exercise ; 
and  if  one  does  not  see  the  advantage  of  this,  let  him  live 
awhile  in  France  or  Italy,  and  see  the  reason  why,  with 
all  their  aspirations  after  liberty,  there  is  no  capability  of 
self-government  in  the  masses  ;  put  the  tiller  of  the  Cam- 
pagna,  or  the  vinedresser  of  France,  beside  the  theologi 
cally  trained,  keen,  thoughtful  New  England  farmer,  and 
see  which  is  best  fitted  to  administer  a  government. 

Another  leading  characteristic  of  the  New  England  clergy 
was  their  great  freedom  of  original  development.  The  vol 
umes  before  us  are  full  of  indications  of  the  most  racy  indi 
viduality.  There  was  no  such  thing  as  a  clerical  mould  or 
pattern  ;  but  each  minister,  particularly  in  the  rural  dis 
tricts,  grew  and  flourished  as  freely  and  unconventionally 
as  the  apple-trees  in  his  own  orchard,  and  was  considered 
none  the  worse  for  that,  so  long  as  he  bore  good  fruit  of  the 
right  sort.  Thus  we  find  among  them  all  stamps  and  kinds 
of  men,  —  men  of  decorum  and  ceremony,  like  Dr.  Em- 
mons  and  President  Edwards,  and  men  who,  aiming  after 
the  real,  despised  the  form,  kept  no  order,  and  revered  no 


224  NEW   ENGLAND   MINISTERS 

ceremony ;  yet  all  flourished  in  peace,  and  were  allowed  to 
do  their  work  in  their  own  way. 

We  find  here  and  there  records  of  pleasant  little  en 
counters  of  humor  among  them  on  these  points.  Parson 
Deane,  of  Portland,  was  a  precise  man,  and  always  appeared 
in  the  clerical  regalia  of  the  times,  with  powdered  wig, 
cocked  hat,  gown,  bands.  Parson  Hemmenway  went  about 
with  just  such  clothes  as  he  happened  to  find  convenient, 
without  the  least  regard  to  the  conventional  order. 

Being  together  on  a  council,  Dr.  Deane  playfully  re 
marked,  — 

"  The  ferryman,  Brother  Hemmenway,  as  we  came  over, 
had  n't  the  least  idea  you  were  a  clergyman.  Now  I  am 
particular  always  to  appear  with  my  wig  on." 

"  Precisely,"  said  Dr.  Hemmenway  ;  "  I  know  it  is  well 
to  bestow  more  abundant  honor  on  the  part  that  lacketh." 

It  is  a  curious  illustration  of  the  times  and  people  to 
see  how  quietly  the  personal  eccentricities  of  a  good  min 
ister  were  received.  One  Mr.  Moody,  who  flourished  in 
the  State  of  Maine,  was  one  of  those  born  oddities  whose 
growth  of  mind  rejects  every  outward  rule.  Brilliant,  ori 
ginal,  restless,  he  found  it  impossible  to  bring  his  thoughts 
to  march  in  the  regular  platoon  and  file  of  a  properly  writ 
ten  sermon.  It  is  told  of  him,  that,  moved  by  the  admira 
tion  of  his  people  for  the  calm  and  orderly  performances  of 
one  of  his  neighboring  brethren  of  the  name  of  Emerson,  he 
resolved  to  write  a  sermon  in  the  same  style.  After  the 
usual  introductory  services,  he  began  to  read  his  perform 
ance,  but  soon  grew  weary,  stumbled  disconsolately,  and  at 
last  stopped,  exclaiming,  "  Emerson  must  be  Emerson, 
and  Moody  must  be  Moody !  I  feel  as  if  I  had  my  head  in 
a  bag  !  You  call  Moody  a  rambling  preacher ;  —  it  is  true 
enough  ;  but  his  preaching  will  do  to  catch  rambling  sin 
ners,  and  you  are  all  runaways  from  the  Lord." 

His  clerical  brethren  at  a  meeting  of  the  Association  once 


NEW   ENGLAND   MINISTERS  225 

undertook  to  call  him  to  account  for  his  odd  expressions  and 
back-handed  strokes.  He  stepped  into  his  study  and  pro 
duced  a  record  of  some  twenty  or  thirty  cases  of  conversions 
which  had  resulted  from  some  of  his  exceptional  sayings. 
As  he  read  them  over  with  the  dates,  they  looked  at  each 
other  with  surprise,  and  one  of  them  very  sensibly  remarked, 
"  If  the  Lord  owns  Father  Moody's  oddities,  we  must  let 
him  take  his  own  way." 

His  son,  Joseph  Moody,  furnished  the  original  incident 
which  Hawthorne  has  so  exquisitely  worked  up  in  his  story 
of  "  The  Minister's  Black  Veil."  Being  of  a  singularly 
nervous  and  melancholic  temperament,  he  actually  for  many 
years  shrouded  his  face  with  a  black  handkerchief.  When 
reading  a  sermon  he  would  lift  this,  but  stood  with  his  back 
to  the  audience  so  that  his  face  was  concealed,  —  all  which 
appears  to  have  been  accepted  by  his  people  with  sacred  sim 
plicity.  He  was  known  in  the  neighborhood  by  the  name 
of  Handkerchief  Moody. 

It  is  recorded  also  of  the  venerable  and  eccentric  Father 
Mills,  of  Torringford,  that,  on  the  death  of  his  much  be 
loved  wife,  he  was  greatly  exercised  as  to  how  a  minister  who 
always  dressed  in  black  could  sufficiently  express  his  devo 
tion  and  respect  for  the  departed  by  any  outward  change  of 
dress.  At  last  he  settled  the  question  to  his  own  satisfac 
tion,  by  substituting  for  his  white  wig  a  black  silk  pocket- 
handkerchief,  with  which  head-dress  he  officiated  in  all  sim 
plicity  during  the  usual  term  of  mourning. 

We  think  it  one  result  of  their  great  freedom  from  any 
strait-laced  conventional  ideas,  that  no  point  of  character  is 
more  frequently  noticed  in  the  subjects  of  these  sketches 
than  wit  and  humor.  New  England  ministers  never  held 
it  a  sin  to  laugh ;  if  they  did,  some  of  them  had  a  great 
deal  to  answer  for ;  for  they  could  scarce  open  their  mouths 
without  dropping  some  provocation  to  a  smile.  An  ecclesi 
astical  meeting  was  always  a  merry  season ;  for  there  never 


226  NEW   ENGLAND   MINISTERS 

were  wanting  quaint  images,  humorous  anecdotes,  and  sharp 
flashes  of  wit,  and  even  the  driest  and  most  metaphysical 
points  of  doctrine  were  often  lit  up  and  illuminated  by  these 
coruscations. 

A  panel  taken  out  of  the  house  of  the  Kev.  John  Lowell, 
of  Newbury,  is  still  preserved,  representing  the  common 
style  of  an  ecclesiastical  meeting  in  those  days.  The  di 
vines,  each  in  full  wig  and  gown,  are  seated  around  a  table, 
smoking  their  pipes,  and  above  is  the  well-known  inscrip 
tion  :  In  necessariis,  Unitas :  in  non  necessariis,  Libertas : 
in  utrisque  Charitas. 

In  that  delightfully  naive  and  simple  journal  of  the  Eev. 
Thomas  Smith,  the  first  minister  settled  in  Portland,  Maine, 
in  the  year  1725,  we  find  the  following  entries  :  — 

"  July  4,  1763.  Mr.  Brooks  was  ordained.  A  multi 
tude  of  people  from  my  parish.  A  decent  solemnity." 

"  January  16, 1765.  Mr.  Foxcroft  was  ordained  at  New 
Gloucester.  We  had  a  pleasant  journey  home.  Mr.  L. 
was  alert  and  kept  us  all  merry.  A  jolly  ordination.  We 
lost  sight  of  decorum." 

This  Mr.  L.,  by  the  bye,  who  was  so  alert  on  this  occa 
sion,  it  appears  by  a  note,  was  Stephen  Longfellow,  the  great 
grandfather  of  the  poet.  Those  who  enjoy  the  poet's  ac 
quaintance  will  probably  testify  that  the  property  of  social 
alertness  has  not  evaporated  from  the  family  in  the  lapse  of 
so  many  years. 

It  is  recorded  of  Dr.  Griffin  that,  when  President  of  the 
Andover  Theological  Seminary,  he  convened  the  students  at 
his  room  one  evening,  and  told  them  he  had  observed  that 
they  were  all  growing  thin  and  dyspeptical  from  a  neglect 
of  the  exercise  of  Christian  laughter,  and  he  insisted  upon 
it  that  they  should  go  through  a  company-drill  in  it  then 
and  there.  The  doctor  was  an  immense  man,  —  over  six 
feet  in  height,  with  great  amplitude  of  chest  and  most  magis 
terial  manners.  "  Here,"  said  he  to  the  first,  "  you  must 


NEW   ENGLAND   MINISTERS  227 

practice  ;  now  hear  me  !  "  and  bursting  out  into  a  sonorous 
laugh,  he  fairly  obliged  his  pupils,  one  by  one,  to  join,  till 
the  whole  were  almost  convulsed.  "  That  will  do  for  once," 
said  the  Doctor,  "  and  now  mind  you  keep  in  practice  ! " 

New  England  used  to  be  full  of  traditions  of  the  odd 
sayings  of  Dr.  Bellamy,  one  of  the  most  powerful  theolo 
gians  and  preachers  of  his  time.  His  humor,  however,  seems 
to  have  been  wholly  a  social  quality,  requiring  to  be  struck 
out  by  the  collision  of  conversation  ;  for  nothing  of  the 
peculiar  quaintness  and  wit  ascribed  to  him  appears  in  his 
writings,  which  are  in  singularly  simple,  clear  English. 
One  or  two  of  his  sayings  circulated  about  us  in  our  child 
hood.  For  example,  when  one  had  built  a  fire  of  green 
wood,  he  exclaimed,  "  Warm  me  here  !  I  ?d  as  soon  try  to 
warm  me  by  starlight  on  the  north  side  of  a  tombstone !  " 
Speaking  of  the  chapel-bell  of  Yale  College,  he  said,  "It  was 
about  as  good  a  bell  as  a  fur  cap  with  a  sheep's  tail  in  it." 

A  young  minister,  who  had  made  himself  conspicuous  for 
a  severe  and  denunciatory  style  of  preaching,  came  to  him 
one  day  to  inquire  why  he  did  not  have  more  success. 
"  Why,  man,"  said  the  Doctor,  "  can't  you  take  a  lesson  of 
the  fisherman  ?  How  do  you  go  to  work,  if  you  want  to 
catch  a  trout  ?  You  get  a  little  hook  and  a  fine  line,  you 
bait  it  carefully  and  throw  it  in  as  gently  as  possible,  and 
then  you  sit  and  wait  and  humor  your  fish  till  you  can  get 
him  ashore.  Now  you  get  a  great  cod-hook  and  rope-line, 
and  thrash  it  into  the  water,  and  bawl  out,  'Bite  or  be 
damned ! >  " 

The  Doctor  himself  gained  such  a  reputation  as  an  expert 
spiritual  fisherman,  that  some  of  his  parishioners,  like  ex 
perienced  old  trout,  played  shy  of  his  hook,  though  never  so 
skillfully  baited. 

"  Why,  Mr.  A.,"  he  said  to  an  old  farmer  in  his  neigh 
borhood,  "  they  tell  me  you  are  an  Atheist.  Don't  you  be 
lieve  in  the  being  of  a  God  ?  " 


228  NEW   ENGLAND   MINISTERS 

"  No  !  "   said  the  man. 

"  But,  Mr.  A.,  let 's  look  into  this.  You  believe  that 
the  world  around  us  exists  from  some  cause  ?  " 

"No,  I  don't!" 

"  Well,  then,  at  any  rate,  you  believe  in  your  own  exist 
ence  ?  " 

"  No,  I  don't !  " 

"  What !   not  believe  that  you  exist  yourself  ?  " 

"  I  tell  you  what,  Doctor,"  said  the  man,  "  I  ain't  going 
to  be  twitched  up  by  any  of  your  syllogisms,  and  so  I  tell 
you  I  don't  believe  anything,  —  and  1 7m  not  going  to  be 
lieve  anything !  " 

A  collection  of  the  table-talk  of  the  clergy  whose  lives 
are  sketched  in  Dr.  Sprague's  volumes  would  be  a  rare  fund 
of  humor,  shrewdness,  genius,  and  originality.  We  must 
say,  however,  that  as  nothing  is  so  difficult  as  to  collect 
these  sparkling  emanations  of  conversation,  the  written 
record  which  this  work  presents  falls  far  below  that  tradi 
tional  one  which  floated  about  us  in  our  earlier  years.  So 
much  in  wit  and  humor  depends  on  the  electric  flash,  the 
relation  of  the  idea  to  the  attendant  circumstances,  that  peo 
ple  often  remember  only  liow  they  have  laughed,  and  can  no 
more  reproduce  the  expression  than  they  can  daguerreotype 
the  heat-lightning  of  a  July  night. 

The  doctrine  that  a  minister  is  to  maintain  some  ethereal, 
unearthly  station,  where,  wrapt  in  divine  contemplation,  he 
is  to  regard  with  indifference  the  actual  struggles  and  real 
ities  of  life,  is  a  sickly  species  of  sentimentalism,  the  growth 
of  modern  refinement,  and  altogether  too  moonshiny  to  have 
been  comprehended  by  our  stout-hearted  and  very  practical 
fathers.  With  all  their  excellences,  they  had  nothing  sen 
timental  about  them ;  they  were  bent  on  reducing  all  things 
to  practical,  manageable  realities.  They  would  not  hear  of 
churches,  but  called  them  meeting-houses  ;  they  would  not 
be  called  clergymen,  but  ministers  or  servants,  —  thereby 


NEW   ENGLAND   MINISTERS  229 

signifying  their  calling  to  real,  tangible  work  among  real 
men  and  things. 

As  we  have  already  said,  in  the  beginnings  of  New  Eng 
land,  the  Church  and  State  were  identical,  and  the  clergy 
ex  officio  the  main  counselors  and  directors  of  the  Common 
wealth  ;  and  when  this  especial  prerogative  was  relinquished, 
they  naturally  retained  something  of  the  bent  it  had  given 
them. 

An  interesting  portion  of  these  sketches  comprises  the 
lives  of  ministers  during  our  Revolutionary  struggle,  show 
ing  how  ardently  and  manfully  at  that  time  the  clergy 
headed  the  people.  Many  of  them  went  into  the  army  as 
chaplains ;  one  or  two,  more  zealous  still,  even  took  up 
temporal  arms  ;  while  the  greater  number  showered  the 
enemy  with  sermons,  tracts,  and  pamphlets. 

Some  of  the  more  zealous  politicians  among  them  did  not 
scruple  to  bring  their  sentiments  even  into  the  prayers  of 
the  church.  We  recollect  an  anecdote  of  a  stout  Whig 
minister  of  New  Haven,  who,  during  the  occupation  of  the 
town  by  the  British,  was  ordered  to  offer  public  prayers  for 
the  King,  which  he  did  as  follows :  "0  Lord,  bless  thy 
servant,  King  George,  and  grant  unto  him  wisdom  ;  for 
thou  knowest,  0  Lord,  he  needs  it." 

So  afterwards,  in  the  time  of  the  Embargo,  Parson  Eaton, 
of  Harpswell,  a  Federalist,  is  recorded  to  have  introduced 
his  prayer  for  the  President  in  a  formula  which  might  be 
recommended  at  the  present  day  for  the  use  of  the  people 
of  Kansas.  "  Forasmuch  as  thou  hast  commanded  us  to 
pray  for  our  enemies,  we  pray  for  the  President  of  these 
United  States,  that  his  heart  may  be  turned  to  just  coun 
sels,"  etc. 

This  same  Parson  Eaton  distinguished  himself  also  for 
his  patriotic  enthusiasm  in  Revolutionary  times.  When  the 
British  had  burned  Falmouth  (Portland)  a  messenger  came 
to  Harpswell  to  beat  up  for  recruits  to  the  Continental 


230  NEW    ENGLAND    MINISTERS 

forces.  Not  succeeding  to  his  mind,  he  went  to  Parson 
Eaton,  one  Sunday  morning,  and  begged  him  to  say  some 
thing  for  him  in  the  course  of  the  day's  services.  "  It  is 
my  sacramental  Sabbath,"  said  the  valiant  Doctor,  "  and  I 
cannot.  But  at  the  going  down  of  the  sun  I  will  speak  to 
my  people."  And  accordingly,  that  very  evening,  Bible  in 
hand,  on  the  green  before  the  meeting-house,  Dr.  Eaton  ad 
dressed  the  people,  denouncing  the  curse  of  Meroz  on  those 
who  came  not  up  to  the  help  of  the  country,  and  recruits 
flowed  in  abundantly. 

The  pastors  of  New  England  were  always  in  their  sphere 
moral  reformers.  Profitable  and  popular  sins,  though  coun 
tenanced  by  long-established  custom,  were  fearlessly  attacked. 
No  sight  could  be  more  impressive  than  that  of  Dr.  Hop 
kins  —  who  with  all  his  power  of  mind  was  never  a  pop 
ular  preacher,  and  who  knew  he  was  not  popular  —  rising 
up  in  Newport  pulpits  to  testify  against  the  slave  trade, 
then  as  reputable  and  profitable  a  sin  as  slaveholding  is 
now.  He  knew  that  Newport  was  the  stronghold  of  the 
practice,  and  that  the  probable  consequence  of  his  faithful 
ness  would  be  the  loss  of  his  pulpit  and  of  his  temporal  sup 
port  ;  but  none  the  less  plainly  and  faithfully  did  he  testify. 
Fond  as  he  was  of  doctrinal  subtilties,  keen  as  was  his  analy 
sis  of  disinterested  benevolence,  he  did  not,  like  some  in  our 
day,  confine  himself  to  analyzing  virtue  in  the  abstract,  but 
took  upon  himself  the  duty  of  practicing  it  in  the  concrete 
without  fear  of  consequences,  —  well  knowing  that  there  is 
no  logic  like  that  of  consistent  action. 

We  should  do  injustice  to  our  subject,  if  we  did  not  add 
a  testimony  to  the  peculiarly  religious  character  and  influ 
ence  of  the  men  of  whom  we  speak.  Shrewd,  practical, 
capable,  as  they  were,  in  the  affairs  of  this  life,  perfectly 
natural  and  human  as  were  their  characters,  still  they  were 
in  the  best  sense  unworldly  men.  Eeligion  was  the  deep 
underlying  stratum  on  which  their  whole  life  was  built. 


NEW   ENGLAND    MINISTERS  231 

Like  the  granite  framework  of  the  earth,  it  sunk  below  all 
and  rose  above  all  else  in  their  life.  No  Acta  /Sanctorum 
contain  more  pathetic  pictures  of  simple  and  all-absorbing 
godliness  than  were  displayed  by  the  subjects  of  these 
sketches.  However  they  may  have  differed  among  them 
selves  as  to  the  metaphysical  adjustment  of  the  Calvinistic 
system,  all  agreed  in  so  presenting  it  as  to  make  God  all  in 
all. 

Doctor  Arnold  says  it  is  necessary  for  the  highest  devel 
opment  of  the  soul  that  it  should  have  somewhere  an  object 
of  entire  reverence  enthroned  above  all  possibility  of  doubt 
or  criticism.  Now  a  radically  democratic  system,  like  that 
of  New  England,  at  once  sweeps  all  factitious  reliances  of 
this  kind  from  the  soul.  No  crown,  no  court,  no  nobility, 
no  ritual,  no  hierarchy,  —  the  beautiful  principles  of  rev 
erence  and  loyalty  might  have  died  out  of  the  American 
heart,  had  not  these  men  by  their  religious  teachings  up 
borne  it  as  on  eagles'  wings  to  the  footstool  of  the  King 
Eternal,  Immortal,  Invisible.  Hence  we  see  why  what  was 
commonly  called  among  them  the  "  Doctrine  of  Divine  Sov 
ereignty  "  acquired  so  prominent  a  place  in  their  preaching 
and  their  hearts.  They  were  men  of  deep  reverence  and 
profound  loyalty  of  nature,  from  whom  every  lower  object 
for  the  repose  of  these  qualities  had  been  torn  away,  —  who 
concentrated  on  God  alone  those  sentiments  of  faith  and 
fealty  which  in  other  lands  are  divided  with  Church  and 
King.  Hence,  more  than  that  of  any  other  clergy,  their 
preaching  contemplated  God  as  King  and  Ruler.  Submis 
sion  to  him  without  condition,  without  limit,  they  both 
preached  and  practiced.  Unconditional  submission  was  as 
constantly  on  their  lips  God-ward  as  it  was  sparingly  uttered 
man-ward. 

No  picture  of  the  "  good  parson "  that  was  ever  drawn 
could  exceed  in  beauty  that  of  the  E-ev.  Jeremiah  Hallock, 
whose  life  and  manners  had  that  indescribable  beauty,  com- 


232  NEW   ENGLAND    MINISTERS 

pleteness,  and  sacredness,  which  religion  sometimes  gives 
when  shining  out  through  a  peculiarly  congenial  natural 
temperament,  —  yet  we  must  confess  we  are  as  much  inter 
ested  and  impressed  with  its  effects  in  those  wilder  and 
more  erratic  temperaments,  such  as  Bellamy,  Backus,  and 
Moody,  where  genius  and  passion  were  so  combined  as  to 
lead  to  many  inconsistencies.  This  book  is  a  record  of  how 
manfully  many  such  men  battled  with  themselves,  repairing 
the  faults  of  their  hasty  and  passionate  hours  by  the  true 
and  honest  humility  of  their  better  ones,  so  that,  as  one  has 
said  of  our  Pilgrim  Fathers,  we  feel  that  they  may  have 
been  endeared  to  God  even  by  their  faults. 

The  pastoral  labors  of  these  ministers  were  abounding. 
Two  and  sometimes  three  services  on  the  Sabbath,  and  a 
weekly  lecture,  were  only  the  beginning  of  their  labors. 
Multitudes  of  them  held  circuit  meetings,  to  the  number 
of  two  or  three  a  week,  in  the  outskirts  of  their  parishes  ; 
besides  which  they  labored  conversationally  from  house  to 
house  with  individuals. 

Gradual,  indefinite,  insensible  amelioration  of  character 
was  not  by  any  means  the  only  or  the  highest  aim  of  their 
preaching.  They  sought  to  make  religion  as  definite  and  as 
real  to  men  as  their  daily  affairs,  and  to  bring  them,  as  re 
spects  their  spiritual  history,  to  crises  as  marked  and  decided 
as  those  to  which  men  are  brought  in  temporal  matters. 
They  must  become  Christians  now,  to-day  ;  the  change  must 
be  immediate,  all-pervading,  thorough. 

Such  a  style  of  preaching,  from  men  of  such  power,  could 
not  be  without  corresponding  results,  especially  as  it  was 
based  always  upon  strong  logical  appeals  to  the  understand 
ing.  From  it  resulted,  from  time  to  time,  periods  which 
are  marked  in  these  narratives  as  revivals  of  religion,  — 
seasons  in  which  the  cumulative  force  of  the  instructions 
and  power  of  the  pastor,  recognized  by  that  gracious  assist 
ance  on  which  he  always  depended,  reached  a  point  of  out- 


NEW   ENGLAND   MINISTERS  233 

ward  development  that  affected  the  whole  social  atmosphere, 
and  brought  him  into  intimate  and  confidential  knowledge 
of  the  spiritual  struggles  of  his  flock.  The  preaching  of 
the  pastor  was  then  attuned  and  modified  to  these  disclosures, 
and  his  metaphysical  system  shaped  and  adapted  to  what  he 
perceived  to  be  the  real  wants  and  weaknesses  of  the  soul. 
Hence  arose  modifications  of  theology,  —  often  interfering 
with  received  theory,  just  as  a  judicious  physician's  clinical 
practice  varies  from  the  book.  Many  of  the  theological 
disputes  which  have  agitated  New  England  have  arisen  in 
the  honest  effort  to  reconcile  accepted  forms  of  faith  with 
the  observed  phenomena  and  real  needs  of  the  soul  in  its 
struggles  heavenward. 


BETTY'S   BRIGHT   IDEA 

"When  He  ascended  up  on  high,  He  led  captivity  captive,  and  GAVE 
GIFTS  unto  men."  —  Eph.  iv.  8. 

"  Some  say  that  ever,  'gainst  that  season  comes 
Wherein  our  Saviour's  birth  is  celebrate, 
The  bird  of  dawning  singeth  all  night  long. 
And  then,  they  say  no  evil  spirit  walks  ; 
The  nights  are  wholesome;  then  no  planets  strike, 
No  fairy  takes,  no  witch  hath  power  to  charm,  — 
So  hallowed  and  so  gracious  is  the  time." 

AND  this  holy  time,  so  hallowed  and  so  gracious,  was 
settling  down  over  the  great  roaring,  rattling,  seething  life- 
world  of  New  York  in  the  good  year  1875.  Who  does  not 
feel  its  oncoming  in  the  shops  and  the  streets,  in  the  fes 
tive  air  of  trade  and  business,  in  the  thousand  garnitures  by 
which  every  store  hangs  out  triumphal  banners  and  solicits 
you  to  buy  something  for  a  Christmas  gift  ?  For  it  is  the 
peculiarity  of  all  this  array  of  prints,  confectionery,  dry 
goods,  and  manufactures  of  all  kinds,  that  their  bravery  and 
splendor  at  Christmas-tide  is  all  to  seduce  you  into  generos 
ity,  and  importune  you  to  give  something  to  others.  It 
says  to  you,  "  The  dear  God  gave  you  an  unspeakable  gift ; 
give  you  a  lesser  gift  to  your  brother  !  " 

Do  we  ever  think,  when  we  walk  those  busy,  bustling 
streets,  all  alive  with  Christmas  shoppers,  and  mingle  with 
the  rushing  tides  that  throng  and  jostle  through  the  stores, 
that  unseen  spirits  may  be  hastening  to  and  fro  along  those 
same  ways  bearing  Christ's  Christmas  gifts  to  men  —  gifts 
whose  value  no  earthly  gold  or  gems  can  represent  ? 

Yet,  on  this  morning  of  the  day  before  Christmas,  were 


BETTY'S  BRIGHT  IDEA  235 

these  Shining  Ones,  moving  to  and  fro  with  the  crowd, 
whose  faces  were  loving  and  serene  as  the  invisible  stars, 
whose  robes  took  no  defilement  from  the  spatter  and  the 
rush  of  earth,  whose  coming  and  going  was  still  as  the  fall 
ing  snowflakes.  They  entered  houses  without  ringing  door 
bells,  they  passed  through  apartments  without  opening  doors, 
and  everywhere  they  were  bearing  Christ's  Christmas  pres 
ents,  and  silently  offering  them  to  whoever  would  open 
their  souls  to  receive.  Like  themselves,  their  gifts  were 
invisible  —  incapable  of  weight  and  measurement  in  gross 
earthly  scales.  To  mourners  they  carried  joy ;  to  weary 
and  perplexed  hearts,  peace  ;  to  souls  stifling  in  luxury  and 
self-indulgence  they  carried  that  noble  discontent  that  rises 
to  aspiration  for  higher  things.  Sometimes  they  took  away 
an  earthly  treasure  to  make  room  for  a  heavenly  one.  They 
took  health,  but  left  resignation  and  cheerful  faith.  They 
took  the  babe  from  the  dear  cradle,  but  left  in  its  place  a 
heart  full  of  pity  for  the  suffering  on  earth  and  a  fellow 
ship  with  the  blessed  in  heaven.  Let  us  follow  their  foot 
steps  awhile. 

SCENE  I 

A  young  girl's  boudoir  in  one  of  our  American  palaces  of 
luxury,  built  after  the  choicest  fancy  of  the  architect,  and 
furnished  in  all  the  latest  devices  of  household  decoration. 
Pictures,  statuettes,  and  every  form  of  bijouterie  make  the 
room  a  miracle  of  beauty,  and  the  little  princess  of  all  sits  in 
an  easy-chair  before  the  fire,  and  thus  revolves  with  herself : 

"  Oh,  dear  me  !  Christmas  is  a  bore  !  Such  a  rush  and 
crush  in  the  streets,  such  a  jam  in  the  shops,  and  then  such 
a  fuss  thinking  up  presents  for  everybody !  All  for  nothing, 
too;  for  nobody  wants  anything,  —  I'm  sure  I  don't.  1 7m 
surfeited  now  with  pictures  and  jewelry,  and  bonbon  boxes, 
and  little  china  dogs  and  cats  —  and  all  these  things  that 


236  BETTY'S  BRIGHT  IDEA 

get  so  thick  you  can't  move  without  upsetting  some  of  them. 
There  's  papa,  he  don't  want  anything.  He  never  uses  any 
of  my  Christmas  presents  when  I  get  them ;  and  mamma, 
she  has  every  earthly  thing  I  can  think  of,  and  said  the 
other  day  she  did  hope  nobody  'd  give  her  any  more  worsted 
work !  Then  Aunt  Maria  and  Uncle  John,  they  don't  want 
the  things  I  give  them  ;  they  have  more  than  they  know 
what  to  do  with,  now.  All  the  boys  say  they  don't  want 
any  more  cigar  cases  or  slippers,  or  smoking-caps.  Oh, 
dear !  » 

Here  the  Shining  Ones  came  and  stood  over  the  little 
lady,  and  looked  down  on  her  with  faces  of  pity,  which 
seemed  blent  with  a  serene  and  half-amused  indulgence.  It 
was  a  heavenly  amusement,  such  as  that  with  which  mothers 
listen  to  the  foolish-wise  prattle  of  children  just  learning  to 
talk.  As  the  grave,  sweet  eyes  rested  tenderly  on  her,  the 
girl  somehow  grew  graver,  leaned  back  in  her  chair,  and 
sighed  a  little. 

"I  wish  I  knew  how  to  be  better! "  she  said  to  herself. 
"I  remember  last  Sunday's  text,  'It  is  more  blessed  to  give 
than  to  receive.'  That  must  mean  something !  Well,  is  n't 
there  something,  too,  in  the  Bible  about  not  giving  to  your 
rich  neighbors  that  can  give  again,  but  giving  to  the  poor 
that  cannot  recompense  you  ?  I  don't  know  any  poor  peo 
ple.  Papa  says  there  are  very  few  deserving  poor  people. 
Well,  for  the  matter  of  that,  there  are  n't  many  deserving 
rich  people.  I,  for  example,  how  much  do  I  deserve  to 
have  all  these  nice  things  ?  I  'm  no  better  than  the  poor 
shop-girls  that  go  trudging  by  in  the  cold  at  six  o'clock  in 
the  morning  —  ugh  !  it  makes  me  shiver  to  think  of  it.  I 
know  if  I  had  to  do  that  7  should  n't  be  good  at  all.  Well, 
I  'd  like  to  give  to  poor  people,  if  I  knew  any." 

At  this  moment  the  door  opened  and  the  maid  entered. 

"Betty,  do  you  know  any  poor  people  I  ought  to  get 
things  for,  this  Christmas  ?  " 


BETTY'S  BRIGHT  IDEA  237 

"  Poor  folks  is  always  plenty,  miss,"  said  Betty. 

"  Oh  yes,  of  course,  beggars ;  but  I  mean  people  that  I 
could  do  something  for  besides  just  give  cold  victuals  or 
money.  I  don't  know  where  to  hunt  them  up,  and  should 
be  afraid  to  go  if  I  did.  Oh  dear  !  it  's  no  use.  I  '11  give 
it  up." 

"  Why,  Miss  Florence,  that  'ud  be  too  bad,  afther  bein' 
that  good  in  yer  heart,  to  let  the  poor  folks  alone  for  fear 
of  goin'  to  them.  But  ye  need  n't  do  that,  for,  now  I  think 
of  it,  there  's  John  Morley's  wife." 

"What,  the  gardener  father  turned  off  for  drinking  ?  " 

"  The  same,  miss.  Poor  boy,  he 's  not  so  bad,  and  he 's 
got  a  wife  and  two  as  pretty  children  as  ever  you  see." 

"I  always  liked  John,"  said  the  young  lady.  "But 
papa  is  so  strict  about  some  things !  He  says  he  never 
will  keep  a  man  a  day  if  he  finds  out  that  he  drinks." 

She  was  quite  silent  for  a  minute,  and  then  broke  out :  — 

"  I  don't  care  ;  it 's  a  good  idea  !  I  say,  Betty,  do  you 
know  where  John's  wife  lives  ?  " 

"  Yes,  miss,  I  've  been  there  often." 

"  Well,  then,  this  afternoon  I  '11  go  with  you  and  see  if 
I  can  do  anything  for  them." 

SCENE  II 

An  attic  room,  neat  and  clean,  but  poorly  furnished  ;  a 
bed  and  a  trundle-bed,  a  small  cooking-stove,  a  shelf  with  a 
few  dishes,  one  or  two  chairs  and  stools,  a  pale,  thin  woman 
working  on  a  vest.  Her  face  is  anxious  ;  her  thin  hands 
tremble  with  weakness,  and  now  and  then  as  she  works 
quiet  tears  drop,  which  she  wipes  quickly.  Poor  people 
cannot  afford  to  shed  tears  ;  it  takes  time  and  injures  eye 
sight.  This  is  John  Morley's  wife.  This  morning  he  has 
risen  and  gone  out  in  a  desperate  mood.  "  No  use  to  try," 
he  says.  "  Did  n't  I  go  a  whole  year  and  never  touch  a 


238  BETTY'S  BRIGHT  IDEA 

drop  ?  And  now  just  because  I  fell  once  I  'm  kicked  out ! 
No  use  to  try.  When  a  fellow  once  trips,  everybody  gives 
him  a  kick.  Talk  about  love  of  Christ !  Who  believes  it  ? 
Don't  see  much  love  of  Christ  where  I  go.  Your  Christians 
hit  a  fellow  that 's  down  as  hard  as  anybody.  It 's  every 
body  for  himself  and  devil  take  the  hindmost.  Well,  I  '11 
trudge  up  to  the  Brooklyn  Navy  Yard  and  see  if  they  '11 
take  me  on  there  —  if  they  won't  I  might  as  well  go  to  sea, 
or  to  the  devil,"  and  out  he  flings. 

"  Mamma  !  "  says  a  little  voice,  "  what  are  we  going  to 
have  for  our  Christmas  ?  " 

It  is  a  little  girl,  with  soft  curly  hair  and  bright,  earnest 
eyes,  that  speaks.  A  sturdy  little  fellow  of  four  presses  up 
to  the  mother's  knee  and  repeats  the  question,  "  Sha'n't  we 
have  a  Christmas,  mother  ?  " 

It  overcomes  the  poor  woman  ;  she  leans  forward,  and 
breaks  into  sobbing,  —  a  tempest  of  sorrow,  long  suppressed, 
that  shakes  her  weak  frame  as  she  thinks  that  her  husband 
is  out  of  work,  desperate,  discouraged,  and  tempted  of  the 
devil,  that  the  rent  is  falling  due,  and  only  the  poor  pay  of 
her  needle  to  meet  it  with.  In  one  of  those  quick  flashes 
which  concentrate  through  the  imagination  the  sorrows  of 
years,  she  seems  to  see  her  little  home  broken  up,  her  hus 
band  in  the  gutter,  her  children  turned  into  the  street.  At 
this  moment  there  goes  up  from  her  heart  a  despairing  cry, 
such  as  a  poor,  hunted,  tired-out  creature  gives  when  brought 
to  the  last  gasp  of  endurance.  It  was  like  the  shriek  of  the 
hare  when  the  hounds  are  upon  it.  She  clasps  her  hands 
and  cries  out,  "  0  my  God,  help  me." 

There  was  no  voice  of  any  that  answered;  there  was 
no  sound  of  footfall  on  the  staircase ;  no  one  entered  the 
door;  and  yet  that  agonized  cry  had  reached  the  heart  it 
was  meant  for.  The  Shining  Ones  were  with  her;  they 
stood,  with  faces  full  of  tenderness,  beaming  down  upon 
her  ;  they  brought  her  a  Christmas  gift  from  Christ  —  the 


BETTY'S  BRIGHT  IDEA  239 

gift  of  trust.  She  knew  not  from  whence  came  the  courage 
and  rest  that  entered  her  soul ;  but  while  her  little  ones 
stood  wondering  and  silent,  she  turned  and  drew  to  herself 
her  well-worn  Bible.  Hands  that  she  did  not  see  guided 
her  as  she  turned  the  pages,  and  pointed  to  the  words :  "  He 
shall  deliver  the  needy  when  he  crieth ;  the  poor  also  and 
him  that  hath  no  helper.  He  shall  spare  the  poor  and 
needy,  arid  shall  save  the  souls  of  the  needy.  He  shall 
redeem  their  soul  from  deceit  and  violence,  and  precious 
shall  their  blood  be  in  his  sight." 

She  laid  down  her  poor  wan  cheek  on  the  merciful  old 
book,  as  on  her  mother's  breast,  and  gave  up  all  the  tangled 
skein  of  life  into  the  hands  of  Infinite  Pity.  There  seemed 
a  consoling  presence  in  the  room,  and  her  tired  heart  found 
rest.  She  wiped  away  her  tears,  kissed  her  children,  and 
smiled  upon  them.  Then  she  rose,  gathered  up  her  fin 
ished  work,  and  attired  herself  to  go  forth  and  carry  it  back 
to  the  shop. 

"  Mother/'  said  the  children  softly,  "  they  are  dressing 
the  church,  and  the  gates  are  open,  and  people  are  going  in 
and  out ;  may  n't  we  play  there  by  the  church  ?  " 

The  mother  looked  out  on  the  ivy-grown  walls  of  the 
church,  with  its  flocks  of  twittering  sparrows,  and  said :  — 

"  Yes,  my  little  birds  ;  you  may  play  there  if  you  '11  be 
very  good  and  quiet." 

The  mother  had  only  her  small,  close  attic  room  for  her 
darlings,  and  to  satisfy  all  their  childish  desire  for  variety 
and  motion  she  had  only  the  refuge  of  the  streets.  She 
was  a  decent,  godly  woman,  and  the  bold  manners  and  evil 
words  of  street  vagrants  were  terrible  to  her ;  and  so,  when 
the  church  gates  were  open  for  daily  morning  and  evening 
prayers,  she  had  often  begged  the  sexton  to  let  her  little 
ones  come  in  and  hear  the  singing,  and  wander  hand  in  hand 
around  the  old  church  walls.  He  was  a  kindly  old  man, 
and  the  children,  stealing  round  like  two  still,  bright-eyed 


240  BETTY'S  BRIGHT  IDEA 

little  mice,  had  gained  upon  his  heart,  and  he  made  them 
welcome  there.  It  gave  the  mother  a  feeling  of  protection 
to  have  them  play  near  the  church,  as  if  it  were  a  father's 
house. 

So  she  put  on  their  little  hoods  and  tippets,  and  led  them 
forth,  and  saw  them  into  the  yard ;  and  as  she  looked  to 
the  old  gray  church,  with  its  rustling  ivy  bowers  and  flocks 
of  birds,  her  heart  swelled  within  her.  "  Yea,  the  spar 
row  hath  found  a  house  and  the  swallow  a  nest  where  she 
may  lay  her  young,  even  thine  altars,  0  Lord  of  hosts,  my 
king  and  my  God  ! "  And  the  Shining  Ones  walking  with 
her  said,  "Fear  not;  ye  are  of  more  value  than  many 
sparrows." 

SCENE  III 

The  little  ones  went  gayly  into  the  yard.  They  had 
been  scared  by  their  mother's  tears  ;  but  she  had  smiled 
again,  and  that  had  made  all  right  with  them.  The  sun 
was  shining  brightly,  and  they  were  on  the  sunny  side  of 
the  old  church,  and  they  laughed  and  chirped  and  chittered 
to  each  other  as  merrily  as  the  little  birds  in  the  ivy  boughs. 

The  old  sexton  came  to  the  side  door  and  threw  out  an 
armful  of  refuse  greens,  and  then  stopped  a  moment  and 
nodded  kindly  at  them. 

"  May  we  play  with  them,  please,  sir  ?  "  said  the  little 
Elsie,  looking  up  with  great  reverence. 

"  Oh,  yes,  to  be  sure  :  these  are  done  with  —  they  are  no 
good  now." 

U0h,  Tottie!"  cried  Elsie  rapturously,  "just  think,  he 
says  we  may  play  with  all  these.  Why,  here 's  ever  and 
ever  so  much  green,  enough  to  play  house.  Let's  play 
build  a  house  for  father  and  mother." 

"I'm  going  to  build  a  big  house  for  'em  when  I  grow  up," 
said  Tottie,  "  and  I  mean  to  have  glass  bead  windows  in  it." 


BETTY'S  BRIGHT  IDEA  241 

Tottie  had  once  had  presented  to  him  a  box  of  colored 
glass  beads  to  string,  and  he  could  think  of  nothing  finer 
in  the  future  than  unlimited  glass  beads.  Meanwhile,  his 
sister  began  planting  pine  branches  upright  in  the  snow,  to 
make  her  house. 

"  You  see  we  can  make  believe  there  are  windows  and 
doors  and  a  roof,'7  she  said,  "  and  it 's  just  as  good.  Now, 
let 's  make  believe  there  is  a  bed  in  this  corner,  and  we  will 
lie  down  to  sleep." 

And  Tottie  obediently  couched  himself  in  the  allotted 
corner  and  shut  his  eyes  very  hard,  though  after  a  moment 
he  remarked  that  the  snow  got  into  his  neck. 

"  You  must  play  it  is  n't  snow  —  play  it  's  feathers/' 
said  Elsie. 

"  But  I  don't  like  it,"  persisted  Tottie,  "  it  don't  feel  a 
bit  like  feathers." 

"Oh,  well,  then,"  said  Elsie,  accommodating  herself  to 
circumstances,  "  let 's  play  get  up  now  and  I  '11  get  break 
fast." 

Just  now  the  door  opened  again,  and  the  sexton  began 
sweeping  the  refuse  out  of  the  church.  There  were  bits  of 
ivy  and  holly,  and  ruffles  of  ground-pine,  and  lots  of  bright 
red  berries  that  came  flying  forth  into  the  yard,  and  the 
children  screamed  for  joy.  "  Oh,  Tottie  !  "  "  Oh,  Elsie  !  " 
"  Only  see  how  many  pretty  things  — lots  and  lots  !  " 

The  sexton  stood  and  looked  and  laughed  as  he  saw  the 
little  ones  so  eager  for  the  scraps  and  remnants. 

"  Don't  you  want  to  come  in  and  see  the  church  ?  "  he 
said.  "  It 's  all  done  now,  and  a  brave  sight  it  is.  You 
may  come  in." 

They  tripped  in  softly,  with  large,  bright,  wondering  eyes. 
The  light  through  the  stained  glass  windows  fell  blue  and 
crimson  and  yellow  on  the  pillars  all  ruffled  with  ground- 
pine  and  brightened  with  scarlet  bitter-sweet  berries,  and 
there  were  stars  and  crosses  and  mottoes  in  green  all  through 


242  BETTY'S  BRIGHT  IDEA 

the  bowery  aisles,  while  the  organist,  hid  in  a  thicket  of 
verdure,  was  practicing  softly,  and  sweet  voices  sung :  — 

"  Hark  !  the  herald  angels  sing 
Glory  to  the  new-born  King." 

The  little  ones  wandered  up  and  down  the  long  aisles  in 
a  dream  of  awe  and  wonder.  "  Hush,  Tottie  !  "  said  Elsie 
when  he  broke  into  an  eager  exclamation,  "  don't  make  a 
noise.  I  do  believe  it  's  something  like  heaven,"  she  said, 
under  her  breath. 

They  made  the  course  of  the  church  and  came  round  by 
the  door  again,  where  the  sexton  stood  smiling  on  them. 

"  You  can  find  lots  of  pretty  Christmas  greens  out  there," 
he  said,  pointing  to  the  door  ;  "  perhaps  your  folks  would 
like  to  have  some." 

"  Oh,  thank  you,  sir,"  exclaimed  Elsie  rapturously. 
"  Oh,  Tottie,  only  think  !  Let 's  gather  a  good  lot  and  go 
home  and  dress  our  room  for  Christmas.  Oh,  worCt  mother 
be  astonished  when  she  comes  home,  we  '11  make  it  so 
pretty  !  " 

And  forthwith  the  children  began  gathering  into  their 
little  aprons  wreaths  of  ground-pine,  sprigs  of  holly,  and 
twigs  of  crimson  bitter-sweet.  The  sexton,  seeing  their  zeal, 
brought  out  to  them  a  little  cross,  fancifully  made  of  red 
alder-berries  and  pine. 

Then  he  said,  aA  lady  took  that  down  to  put  up  a  big 
ger  one,  and  she  gave  it  to  me  ;  you  may  have  it  if  you 
want  it." 

"Oh,  how  beautiful,"  said  Elsie.  "How  glad  I  am  to 
have  this  for  mother !  When  she  comes  back  she  won't 
know  our  room ;  it  will  be  as  fine  as  the  church." 

Soon  the  little  gleaners  were  toddling  off  out  of  the  yard 
—  moving  masses  of  green  with  all  that  their  aprons  and 
their  little  hands  could  carry.  The  sexton  looked  after 
them.  "  Take  heed  that  ye  despise  not  these  little  ones," 
he  said  to  himself,  "  for  in  heaven  their  angels  "  — 


BETTY'S  BRIGHT  IDEA  243 

A  ray  of  tenderness  fell  on  the  old  man's  head ;  it  was 
from  the  Shining  One  who  watched  the  children.  He 
thought  it  was  an  afternoon  sunbeam.  His  heart  grew  gen 
tle  and  peaceful,  and  his  thoughts  went  far  back  to  a  dis 
tant  green  grove  where  his  own  little  one  was  sleeping. 
"  Seems  to  me  I  've  loved  all  little  ones  ever  since,"  he 
said,  thinking  far  back  to  the  Christmas  week  when  his 
lamb  was  laid  to  rest.  "  Well,  she  shall  not  return  to  me, 
but  I  shall  go  to  her."  The  smile  of  the  Shining  One  made 
a  warm  glow  in  his  heart,  which  followed  him  all  the  way 
home.  The  children  had  a  merry  time  dressing  the  room. 
They  stuck  good  big  bushes  of  pine  in  each  window  ;  they 
put  a  little  ruffle  of  ground-pine  round  mother's  Bible,  and 
they  fastened  the  beautiful  red  cross  up  over  the  table,  and 
they  stuck  sprigs  of  pine  or  holly  into  every  crack  that 
could  be  made,  by  fair  means  or  foul,  to  accept  it ;  and  they 
were  immensely  satisfied  and  delighted.  Tottie  insisted  on 
hanging  up  his  string  of  many-colored  beads  in  the  window 
to  imitate  the  effect  of  the  stained  glass  of  the  great  church 
window. 

"  It  looks  pretty  when  the  light  comes  through,"  he  re 
marked  ;  and  Elsie  admitted  that  they  might  play  they  were 
painted  windows,  with  some  show  of  propriety.  When 
everything  had  been  stuck  somewhere,  Elsie  swept  the  floor, 
and  made  up  a  fire,  and  put  on  the  teakettle,  to  have  every 
thing  ready  to  strike  mother  favorably  on  her  return. 

SCENE  IV 

A  freezing,  bright,  cold  afternoon.  "Cold  as  Christ 
mas  !  "  say  cheery  voices,  as  the  crowds  rush  to  and  fro  into 
shops  and  stores,  and  come  out  with  hands  full  of  presents. 

"  Yes,  cold  as  Christmas,"  says  John  Morley.  "  I  should 
think  so  !  Cold  enough  for  a  fellow  that  can't  get  in  any 
where  —  that  nobody  wants  and  nobody  helps !  I  should 
think  so." 


244  BETTY'S  BRIGHT  IDEA 

John  had  been  trudging  all  day  from  point  to  point,  only 
to  hear  the  old  story :  times  were  hard,  work  was  dull,  no 
body  wanted  him,  and  he  felt  morose  and  surly  —  out  of 
humor  with  himself  and  with  everybody  else.  It  is  true 
that  his  misfortunes  were  from  his  own  fault ;  but  that  con 
sideration  never  makes  a  man  a  particle  more  patient  or  good- 
natured  —  indeed,  it  is  an  additional  bitterness  in  his  cup. 
John  was  an  Englishman.  When  he  first  landed  in  New 
York  from  the  old  country,  he  had  been  wild  and  dissipated 
and  given  to  drinking.  But  by  his  wife's  earnest  entreaties 
he  had  been  persuaded  to  sign  the  temperance  pledge,  and 
had  gone  on  prosperously  keeping  it  for  a  year.  He  had  a 
good  place  and  good  wages,  and  all  went  well  with  him  till 
in  an  evil  hour  he  met  some  of  his  former  boon  companions, 
and  was  induced  to  have  a  social  evening  with  them. 

In  the  first  half  hour  of  that  evening  were  lost  the  fruits 
of  the  whole  year's  self-denial  and  self-control.  He  was  not 
only  drunk  that  night,  but  he  went  off  for  a  fortnight,  and 
was  drunk  night  after  night,  and  came  back  to  find  that 
his  master  had  discharged  him  in  indignation.  John  thinks 
this  over  bitterly,  as  he  thuds  about  in  the  cold,  and  calls 
himself  a  fool.  Yet,  if  the  truth  must  be  confessed,  John 
had  not  much  "  sense  of  sin,"  so  called.  He  looked  on  him 
self  as  an  unfortunate  and  rather  ill-used  man,  for  had  he 
not  tried  very  hard  to  be  good,  and  gone  a  great  while  against 
the  stream  of  evil  inclination  ?  and  now,  just  for  one  yield 
ing,  he  was  pitched  out  of  place,  and  everybody  was  turned 
against  him  !  He  thought  this  was  hard  measure.  Did  n't 
everybody  hit  wrong  sometimes  ?  Did  n't  rich  fellows  have 
their  wine,  and  drink  a  little  too  much  now  and  then? 
Yet  nobody  was  down  on  them. 

"  It 's  only  because  I  'm  poor,"  said  John.  "  Poor  folks' 
sins  are  never  pardoned.  There's  my  good  wife  —  poor 
girl ! "  and  John's  heart  felt  as  if  it  were  breaking,  for  he 
was  an  affectionate  creature,  and  loved  his  wife  and  babies, 


BETTY'S  BRIGHT  IDEA  245 

and  in  his  deepest  consciousness  he  knew  that  he  was  the 
one  at  fault.  We  have  heard  much  ahout  the  sufferings 
of  the  wives  and  children  of  men  who  are  overtaken  with 
drink  ;  but  what  is  not  so  well  understood  is  the  sufferings 
of  the  men  themselves  in  their  sober  moments,  when  they 
feel  that  they  are  becoming  a  curse  to  all  that  are  dearest  to 
them.  John's  very  soul  was  wrung  within  him  to  think 
of  the  misery  he  had  brought  on  his  wife  and  children  — 
the  greater  miseries  that  might  be  in  store  for  them.  He" 
was  faint  of  heart ;  he  was  tired ;  he  had  eaten  nothing 
for  hours,  and  on  ahead  he  saw  a  drinking-saloon.  Why 
should  n't  he  go  and  take  one  good  drink,  and  then  pitch  off 
a  ferryboat  into  the  East  River,  and  so  end  the  whole  mis 
erable  muddle  of  life  altogether  ? 

John's  steps  were  turning  that  way,  when  one  of  the 
Shining  Ones,  who  had  watched  him  all  day,  came  nearer 
and  took  his  hand.  He  felt  no  touch  ;  but  at  that  moment 
there  darted  into  his  soul  a  thought  of  his  mother,  long 
dead,  and  he  stopped  irresolute,  then  turned  to  walk  another 
way.  The  hand  that  was  guiding  him  led  him  to  turn  a 
corner,  and  his  curiosity  was  excited  by  a  stream  of  people 
who  seemed  to  be  pressing  into  a  building.  A  distant  sound 
of  singing  was  heard  as  he  drew  nearer,  and  soon  he  found 
himself  passing  with  the  multitude  into  a  great  prayer- 
meeting.  The  music  grew  more  distinct  as  he  went  in.  A 
man  was  singing  in  clear,  penetrating  tones :  — 

"What  means  this  eager,  anxious  throng, 
Which  moves  with  husy  haste  along; 
These  wondrous  gatherings  day  by  day; 
What  means  this  strange  commotion,  say  ? 
In  accents  hushed  the  throng  reply, 
'  Jesus  of  Nazareth  passeth  by ! '  " 

John  had  but  a  vague  idea  of  religion,  yet  something  in  the 
singing  affected  him ;  and,  weary  and  footsore  and  heartsore 
as  he  was,  he  sank  into  a  seat  and  listened  with  absorbed 
attention :  — 


246  BETTY'S  BRIGHT  IDEA 

"Jesus!  'tis  he  who  once  below 
Man's  pathway  trod  in  toil  and  woe; 
And  burdened  ones  where'er  he  came 
Brought  out  their  sick  and  deaf  and  lame. 
The  blind  rejoiced  to  hear  the  cry, 
'Jesus  of  Nazareth  passeth  by! ' 

"  Ho,  all  ye  heavy-laden,  come ! 
Here  's  pardon,  comfort,  rest,  and  home. 
Ye  wanderers  from  a  Father's  face, 
Return,  accept  his  proffered  grace. 
Ye  tempted  ones,  there  's  refuge  nigh  — 
'Jesus  of  Nazareth  passeth  by! '" 

A  plain  man,  who  spoke  the  language  of  plain  working- 
men,  now  arose  and  read  from  his  Bible  the  words  which 
the  angel  of  old  spoke  to  the  shepherds  of  Bethlehem :  — 

"  Fear  not,  for  behold,  I  bring  you  tidings  of  great  joy, 
which  shall  be  to  all  people,  for  unto  you  is  born  this  day 
a  Saviour,  which  is  Christ  the  Lord." 

The  man  went  on  to  speak  of  this  with  an  intense  prac 
tical  earnestness  that  soon  made  John  feel  as  if  he,  individ 
ually,  were  being  talked  to ;  and  the  purport  of  the  speech 
was  this :  that  God  had  sent  to  him,  John  Morley,  a  Saviour 
to  save  him  from  his  sins,  to  lift  him  above  his  weakness, 
to  help  him  overcome  his  bad  habits ;  that  His  name  was 
called  Jesus,  because  he  shall  save  his  people  from  their 
sins.  John  listened  with  a  strange  new  thrill.  This  was 
what  he  needed  —  a  Friend,  all-powerful,  all-pitiful,  who 
would  undertake  for  him  and  help  him  to  overcome  himself 
—  for  he  sorely  felt  how  weak  he  was.  Here  was  a  Friend 
that  could  have  compassion  on  the  ignorant  and  them  that 
were  out  of  the  way.  The  thought  brought  tears  to  his 
eyes  and  a  glow  of  hope  to  his  heart.  What  if  He  would 
help  him  ?  for  deep  down  in  John's  heart,  worse  than  cold 
or  hunger  or  weariness,  was  the  dreadful  conviction  that  he 
was  a  doomed  man,  that  he  should  drink  again  as  he  had 
drunk,  and  never  come  to  good,  but  fall  lower  and  lower, 
and  drag  all  who  loved  him  down  with  him. 

And  was  this  mighty  Saviour  given  to  him  ? 


BETTY'S  BRIGHT  IDEA  247 

"  Yes,"  cried  the  man  who  was  speaking ;  "  to  you  ;  to 
you,  who  have  lost  name  and  place  ;  to  you,  that  nobody 
cares  for ;  to  you,  who  have  been  down  in  the  gutter.  God 
has  sent  you  a  Saviour  to  take  you  up  out  of  the  mud  and 
mire,  to  wash  you  clean,  to  give  you  strength  to  overcome 
your  sins,  and  lead  you  home  to  his  blessed  kingdom.  This 
is  the  glad  tidings  of  great  joy  that  the  angels  brought  on 
the  first  Christmas  Day.  CHRIST  was  God's  Christmas  gift 
to  a  poor,  lost  world,  and  you  may  have  him  now,  to-day. 
He  may  be  your  own  Saviour  —  yours  as  much  as  if  there 
were  no  other  one  on  earth  to  be  saved.  He  is  looking  for 
you  to-day,  coming  after  you,  seeking  you ;  He  calls  you  by 
me.  Oh,  accept  him  now  !  " 

There  was  a  deep  breathing  of  suppressed  emotion  as  the 
speaker  sat  down,  a  pause  of  solemn  stillness. 

A  faint  strain  of  music  was  heard,  and  the  singer  began 
singing  a  pathetic  ballad  of  a  lost  sheep  and  of  the  Shepherd 
going  forth  to  seek  it  :  — 

"  There  were  ninety  and  nine  that  safely  lay 

In  the  shelter  of  the  fold, 
But  one  was  out  on  the  hills  away, 
Far  off  from  the  gates  of  gold  — 
Away  on  the  mountains  wild  and  bare, 
Away  from  the  tender  Shepherd's  care. 

'"Lord,  Thou  hast  here  Thy  ninety  and  nine; 

Are  they  not  enough  for  Thee  ?  ' 
But  the  Shepherd  made  answer  :  This  of  mine 

Has  wandered  away  from  me ; 
And  although  the  road  be  rough  and  steep 
I  go  to  the  desert  to  find  my  sheep.'  " 

John  heard  with  an  absorbed  interest.  All  around  him 
were  eager  listeners,  breathless,  leaning  forward  with  in 
tense  attention.  The  song  went  on  :  — 

"  But  none  of  the  ransomed  ever  knew 
How  deep  were  the  waters  crossed ; 
Nor  how  dark  was  the  night  that  the  Lord  went  through, 

Ere  He  found  His  sheep  that  was  lost. 
Out  in  the  desert  He  heard  its  cry  — 
Sick  and  helpless,  and  ready  to  die." 


248  BETTY'S  BRIGHT  IDEA 

There  was  a  throbbing  pathos  in  the  intonation,  and  the 
verse  floated  over  the  weeping  throng ;  when,  after  a  pause, 
the  strain  was  taken  up  triumphantly  :  — 

"  But  all  through  the  mountains  thunder-riven, 

And  up  from  the  rocky  steep, 
There  rose  a  cry  to  the  gates  of  heaven, 

'  Rejoice  !  I  have  found  my  sheep  ! ' 
And  the  angels  echoed  around  the  throne, 
'  Rejoice,  for  the  Lord  brings  back  His  own  ! '  " 

All  day  long,  poor  John  had  felt  so  lonesome  !  Nobody 
cared  for  him ;  nobody  wanted  him  ;  everything  was  against 
him ;  and,  worst  of  all,  he  had  no  faith  in  himself.  But 
here  was  this  Friend,  seeking  him,  following  him  through 
the  cold  alleys  and  crowded  streets.  In  heaven  they  would 
be  glad  to  hear  that  he  had  become  a  good  man.  The 
thought  broke  down  all  his  pride,  all  his  bitterness ;  he 
wept  like  a  little  child ;  and  the  Christmas  gift  of  Christ  — 
the  sense  of  a  real,  present,  loving,  pitying  Saviour  —  came 
into  his  very  soul. 

He  went  homeward  as  one  in  a  dream.  He  passed  the 
drinking  -  saloon  without  a  thought  or  wish  of  drinking. 
The  expulsive  force  of  a  new  emotion  had  for  the  time 
driven  out  all  temptation.  Raised  above  weakness,  he 
thought  only  of  this  Jesus,  this  Saviour  from  sin,  who 
he  now  believed  had  followed  him  and  found  him,  and  he 
longed  to  go  home  and  tell  his  wife  what  great  things  the 
Lord  had  done  for  him. 

SCENE  V 

Meanwhile  a  little  drama  had  been  acting  in  John's 
humble  home.  His  wife  had  been  to  the  shop  that  day 
and  come  home  with  the  pittance  for  her  work  in  her 
hands. 

"  I  '11  pay  you  full  price  to-day,  but  we  can't  pay  such 
prices  any  longer,"  the  man  had  said  over  the  counter  as  he 


BETTY'S  BEIGHT  IDEA  249 

paid  her.  "  Hard  times  —  work  dull  —  we  are  cutting 
down  all  our  work-folks ;  you  '11  have  to  take  a  third  less 
next  time." 

"  I  '11  do  my  best,"  she  said  meekly,  as  she  took  her 
bundle  of  work  and  turned  wearily  away,  but  the  invisible 
arm  of  the  Shining  One  was  round  her,  and  the  words  again 
thrilled  through  her  that  she  had  read  that  morning :  "  He 
shall  redeem  their  soul  from  deceit  and  violence,  and  precious 
shall  their  blood  be  in  his  sight."  She  saw  no  earthly 
helper ;  she  heard  none  and  felt  none,  and  yet  her  soul  was 
sustained,  and  she  came  home  in  peace.  When  she  opened 
the  door  of  her  little  room  she  drew  back  astonished  at  the 
sight  that  presented  itself.  A  brisk  fire  was  roaring  in 
the  stove,  and  the  teakettle  was  sputtering  and  sending  out 
clouds  of  steam.  A  table  with  a  white  cloth  on  it  was 
drawn  out  before  the  fire,  and  a  new  tea-set  of  pure  white 
cups  and  saucers,  with  teapot,  sugar  -  bowl,  and  creamer, 
complete,  gave  a  festive  air  to  the  whole.  There  were 
bread,  and  butter,  and  ham  sandwiches,  and  a  Christmas 
cake  all  frosted  with  little  blue  and  red  and  green  candles 
round  it  ready  to  be  lighted,  and  a  bunch  of  hothouse  flow 
ers  in  a  pretty  little  vase  in  the  centre.  A  new  stuffed 
rocking-chair  stood  on  one  side  of  the  stove,  and  there  sat 
Miss  Florence  de  Witt,  our  young  princess  of  Scene  First, 
holding  little  Elsie  in  her  lap,  while  the  broad,  honest 
countenance  of  Betty  was  beaming  with  kindness  down  on 
the  delighted  face  of  Tottie.  Both  children  were  dressed 
from  head  to  foot  in  complete  new  suits  of  clothes,  and  Elsie 
was  holding  with  tender  devotion  a  fine  doll,  while  Tottie 
rejoiced  in  a  horse  and  cart  which  he  was  manoeuvring 
under  Betty's  superintendence. 

The  little  princess  had  pleased  herself  in  getting  up  all 
this  tableau.  Doing  good  was  a  novelty  to  her,  and  she 
plunged  into  it  with  the  zest  of  a  new  amusement.  The 
amazed  look  of  the  poor  woman,  her  dazed  expressions  of 


250  BETTY'S  BRIGHT  IDEA 

rapture  and  incredulous  joy,  the  shrieks  and  cries  of  con 
fused  delight  with  which  the  little  ones  met  their  mother, 
delighted  her  more  than  any  scene  she  had  ever  witnessed 
at  the  opera  —  with  this  added  grace,  unknown  to  her,  that  at 
this  scene  the  invisible  Shining  Ones  were  pleased  witnesses. 
She  had  been  out  with  Betty,  buying  here  and  there  what 
ever  was  wanted,  —  and  what  was  not  wanted  for  those 
who  had  been  living  so  long  without  work  or  money  ?  She 
had  their  little  coal-bin  filled,  and  a  nice  pile  of  wood  and 
kindlings  put  behind  the  stove.  She  had  bought  a  nice 
rocking-chair  for  the  mother  to  rest  in.  She  had  dressed 
the  children  from  head  to  foot  at  a  ready-made  clothing 
store,  and  bought  them  toys  to  their  heart's  desire,  while 
Betty  had  set  the  table  for  a  Christmas  feast. 

And  now  she  said  to  the  poor  woman  at  last :  — 

"  I  'm  so  sorry  John  lost  his  place  at  father's.  He  was 
so  kind  and  obliging,  and  I  always  liked  him  ;  and  I  've 
been  thinking,  if  you  'd  get  him  to  sign  the  pledge  over 
again  from  Christmas  Eve,  never  to  touch  another  drop,  I  '11 
get  papa  to  take  him  back.  I  always  do  get  papa  to  do 
what  I  want,  and  the  fact  is,  he  has  n't  got  anybody  that 
suited  him  so  well  since  John  left.  So  you  tell  John  that 
I  mean  to  go  surety  for  him ;  he  certainly  won't  fail  me. 
Tell  him  I  trust  him."  And  Miss  Florence  pulled  out  a 
paper  wherein,  in  her  best  round  hand,  she  had  written  out 
again  the  temperance  pledge,  and  dated  it  "  Christmas 
Eve,  1875." 

"  Now,  you  come  with  John  to-morrow  morning,  and 
bring  this  with  his  name  to  it,  and  you  '11  see  what  I  '11 
do  !  "  and,  with  a  kiss  to  the  children,  the  little  good  fairy 
departed,  leaving  the  family  to  their  Christmas  Eve. 

What  that  Christmas  Eve  was  when  the  husband  and 
father  came  home  with  the  new  and  softened  heart  that 
had  been  given  him,  who  can  say  ?  There  were  joyful 
tears  and  solemn  prayers,  and  earnest  vows  and  purposes 


BETTY'S  BRIGHT  IDEA  251 

of  a  new  life  heard  by  the  Shining  Ones  in  the  room  that 
night. 

"And  the  angels  echoed  around  the  throne, 
Rejoice!  for  the  Lord  brings  back  his  own." 


SCENE  VI 

"  Now,  papa,  I  want  you  to  give  me  something  special 
to-day,  because  it 's  Christmas/'  said  the  little  princess  to 
her  father,  as  she  kissed  and  wished  him  "  Merry  Christ 
mas  "  next  morning. 

"  What  is  it,  Pussy  —  half  of  my  kingdom  ?  " 

"  No,  no,  papa  ;  not  so  much  as  that.  It  's  a  little  bit 
of  my  own  way  that  I  want." 

"  Of  course  ;  well,  what  is  it  ?  " 

"  Well,  I  want  you  to  take  John  back  again. " 

Her  father's  face  grew  hard. 

"  Now,  please,  papa,  don't  say  a  word  till  you  have  heard 
me.  John  was  a  capital  gardener ;  he  kept  the  green 
house  looking  beautiful ;  and  this  Mike  that  we  've  got  now, 
he  's  nothing  but  an  apprentice,  and  stupid  as  an  owl  at 
that  !  He  '11  never  do  in  the  world." 

"  All  that  is  very  true,"  said  Mr.  de  Witt,  "  but  John 
drinks,  and  I  won't  have  a  drinking  man." 

"  But,  papa,  I  mean  to  take  care  of  that.  I  've  written 
out  the  temperance  pledge,  and  dated  it,  and  got  John  to 
sign  it,  and  here  it  is,"  and  she  handed  the  paper  to  her 
father,  who  read  it  carefully,  and  sat  turning  it  in  his  hands 
while  his  daughter  went  on  :  — 

"  You  ought  to  have  seen  how  poor,  how  very  poor  they 
were.  His  wife  is  such  a  nice,  quiet,  hard-working  woman, 
and  has  two  such  pretty  children.  I  went  to  see  them  and 
carry  them  Christmas  things  yesterday,  but  it 's  no  good 
doing  anything  if  John  can't  get  work.  She  told  me  how 
the  poor  fellow  had  been  walking  the  streets  in  the  cold, 


252  BETTY'S  BKIGHT  IDEA 

day  after  day,  trying  everywhere,  and  nobody  would  take 
him.  It's  a  dreadful  time  now  for  a  man  to  be  out  of 
work,  and  it  is  n't  fair  his  poor  wife  and  children  should 
suffer.  Do  try  him  again,  papa  !  " 

"  John  always  did  better  with  the  pineapples  than  any 
body  we  have  tried,"  said  Mrs.  De  Witt  at  this  point. 
"  He  is  the  only  one  who  really  understands  pineapples." 

At  this  moment  the  door  opened,  and  there  was  a  sound 
of  chirping  voices  in  the  hall.  "  Please,  Miss  Florence," 
said  Betty,  "  the  little  folks  says  they  wants  to  give  you  a 
Christmas."  She  added  in  a  whisper  :  "  They  thinks  much 
of  giving  you  something,  poor  little  things  —  plaze  take  it 
of  'em."  And  little  Tottie  at  the  word  inarched  in  and 
offered  the  young  princess  his  dear,  beautiful,  beloved  string 
of  glass  beads,  and  Elsie  presented  the  cross  of  red  berries 

—  most  dear  to  her  heart  and  fair  to  her  eyes.     "  We  wanted 
to  give  you  something,"  she  said  bashfully. 

"  Oh,  you  lovely  dears  !  "  cried  Florence  ;  "  how  sweet 
of  you  !  I  shall  keep  these  beautiful  glass  beads  always, 
and  put  the  cross  up  over  my  dressing-table.  I  thank  you 
ever  so  much  !  " 

"  Are  those  John's  children  ?  "  asked  Mr.  de  Witt, 
winking  a  tear  out  of  his  eye  —  he  was  at  bottom  a  soft 
hearted  old  gentleman. 

"  Yes,  papa,"  said  Florence,  caressing  Elsie's  curly  hair, 

—  "  see  how  sweet  they  are  !  " 

"  Well  —  you  may  tell  John  I  '11  try  him  again." 
And  so  passed  Florence's  Christmas,  with  a  new,  warm 
sense  of  joy  in  her  heart,  a  feeling   of   something  in   the 
world  to  be  done,  worth  doing. 

"  How  much  joy  one  can  give  with  a  little  money  !  "  she 
said  to  herself  as  she  counted  over  what  she  had  spent  on 
her  Christmas.  Ah  yes !  and  how  true  that  "  it  is  more 
blessed  to  give  than  to  receive."  A  shining,  invisible  hand 
was  laid  on  her  head  in  blessing  as  she  lay  down  that  night, 


BETTY'S  BKIGHT  IDEA  253 

and  a  sweet  sense  of  a  loving  presence  stole  like  music  into 
her  soul.  Unknown  to  herself,  she  had  that  day  taken  the 
first  step  out  of  self-life  into  that  life  of  love  and  care  for 
others  which  brought  the  King  of  Glory  down  to  share 
earth's  toils  and  sorrows.  And  that  precious  experience 
was  Christ's  Christmas  gift  to  her. 


DEACON   PITKIN'S   FABM 
CHAPTER  I 

MISS    DIANA 

THANKSGIVING  was  impending  in  the  village  of  Maple- 
ton  on  the  20th  of  November,  1825.  The  Governor's  pro 
clamation  had  been  duly  and  truly  read  from  the  pulpit  the 
Sunday  before,  to  the  great  consternation  of  Miss  Briskett, 
the  ambulatory  dressmaker,  who  declared  confidentially  to 
Deacon  Pitkin's  wife  that  "  she  didn't  see  nothin'  how  she 
was  goin'  to  get  through  things  —  and  there  was  Saphiry's 
gown,  and  Mis'  Deacon  Trowbridge's  cloak,  and  Lizy  Jane's 
new  merino,  not  a  stroke  done  on't.  The  Governor  ought 
to  be  ashamed  of  himself  for  hurrying  matters  so." 

It  was  a  very  rash  step  for  Miss  Briskett  to  go  to  the 
length  of  such  a  remark  about  the  Governor,  but  the  dea 
con's  wife  was  one  of  the  few  women  who  are  nonconduc 
tors  of  indiscretion,  and  so  the  Governor  never  heard  of  it. 
This  particular  Thanksgiving-tide  was  marked  in  Mapleton 
by  exceptionally  charming  weather.  Once  in  a  great  while 
the  inclement  New  England  skies  are  taken  with  a  remorse 
ful  twinge  and  forget  to  give  their  usual  snap  of  September 
frost  which  generally  bites  off  all  the  pretty  flowers  in  so 
heartbreaking  a  way,  and  then  you  can  have  lovely  times 
quite  down  through  November. 

It  was  so  this  year  at  Mapleton.  Though  the  Thanks 
giving  proclamation  had  been  read,  and  it  was  past  the 
middle  of  November,  yet  marigolds  and  four-o'clocks  were 
all  ablaze  in  the  gardens,  and  the  goldenrod  and  purple 


MISS  DIANA  255 

aster  were  blooming  over  the  fields  as  if  they  were  expecting 
to  keep  it  up  all  winter.  It  really  is  affecting,  the  jolly 
good  heart  with  which  these  bright  children  of  the  rainbow 
flaunt  and  wave  and  dance  and  go  on  budding  and  blossom 
ing  in  the  very  teeth  and  snarl  of  oncoming  winter.  An 
autumn  goldenrod  or  aster  ought  to  be  the  symbol  for  pluck 
and  courage,  and  might  serve  a  New  England  crest  as  the 
broom  flower  did  the  old  Plantagenets.  The  trees  round 
Mapleton  were  looking  like  gigantic  tulip  beds,  and  breaking 
every  hour  into  new  phantasmagoria  of  color ;  and  the  great 
elm  that  overshadowed  the  red  Pitkin  farmhouse  seemed 
like  a  dome  of  gold,  and  sent  a  yellow  radiance  through  all 
the  doors  and  windows  as  the  dreamy  autumn  sunshine 
streamed  through  it.  The  Pitkin  elm  was  noted  among  the 
great  trees  of  New  England.  Now  and  then  Nature  asserts 
herself  and  does  something  so  astonishing  and  overpowering 
as  actually  to  strike  through  the  crust  of  human  stupidity, 
and  convince  mankind  that  a  tree  is  something  greater  than 
they  are.  As  a  general  thing  the  human  race  has  a  stupid 
hatred  of  trees.  They  embrace  every  chance  to  cut  them 
down.  They  have  no  idea  of  their  fitness  for  anything  but 
firewood  or  fruit-bearing.  But  a  great  cathedral  elm,  with 
shadowy  aisles  of  boughs,  its  choir  of  whispering  winds  and 
chanting  birds,  its  hush  and  solemnity  and  majestic  gran 
deur,  actually  conquers  the  dull  human  race  and  asserts  its 
leave  to  be  in  a  manner  to  which  all  hearts  respond ;  and 
so  the  great  elms  of  New  England  have  got  to  be  regarded 
with  a  sort  of  pride  as  among  her  very  few  crown  jewels, 
and  the  Pitkin  elm  was  one  of  these. 

But  was  n't  it  a  busy  time  in  Mapleton !  Busy  is  no 
word  for  it.  Oh,  the  choppings,  the  poundings,  the  stoning 
of  raisins,  the  projections  of  pies  and  puddings,  the  killing 
of  turkeys  —  who  can  utter  it  ?  The  very  chip  squirrels 
in  the  stone  walls,  who  have  a  family  custom  of  making  a 
market-basket  of  their  mouths,  were  rushing  about  with 


256  DEACON  PITKIN'S  FARM 

chops  incredibly  distended,  and  their  tails  had  an  extra 
whisk  of  thanksgiving  alertness.  A  squirrel's  Thanks 
giving  dinner  is  an  affair  of  moment,  mind  you.  In  the 
great,  roomy,  clean  kitchen  of  the  deacon's  house  might  be 
seen  the  lithe,  comely  form  of  Diana  Pitkin  presiding  over 
the  roaring  great  oven  which  was  to  engulf  the  armies  of 
pies  and  cakes  which  were  in  due  course  of  preparation  on 
the  ample  tables.  Of  course  you  want  to  know  who  Diana 
Pitkin  was.  It  was  a  general  fact  about  this  young  lady 
that  anybody  who  gave  one  look  at  her,  whether  at  church 
or  at  home,  always  inquired  at  once  with  effusion,  "  Who 
is  she  ?  "  —  particularly  if  the  inquirer  was  one  of  the  mas 
culine  gender.  This  was  to  be  accounted  for  by  the  fact 
that  Miss  Diana  presented  to  the  first  view  of  the  gazer  a 
dazzling  combination  of  pink  and  white,  a  flashing  pair  of 
black  eyes,  a  ripple  of  dimples  about  the  prettiest  little  rosy 
mouth  in  the  world,  and  a  frequent  somewhat  saucy  laugh, 
which  showed  a  set  of  teeth  like  pearls.  Add  to  this  a 
quick  wit,  a  generous  though  spicy  temper,  and  a  nimble 
tongue,  and  you  will  not  wonder  that  Miss  Diana  was  a 
marked  character  at  Mapleton,  and  that  the  inquiry  who 
she  was  was  one  of  the  most  interesting  facts  of  statistical 
information. 

Well,  she  was  Deacon  Pitkin's  second  cousin,  and  of 
course  just  in  that  convenient  relationship  to  the  Pitkin 
boys  which  has  all  the  advantages  of  cousinship  and  none 
of  the  disadvantages,  as  may  be  plain  to  an  ordinary  ob 
server.  For  if  Miss  Diana  wished  to  ride  or  row  or  dance 
with  any  of  the  Pitkin  boys,  why  should  n't  she  ?  Were 
they  not  her  cousins  ?  But  if  any  of  these  aforenamed 
young  fellows  advanced  on  the  strength  of  these  intimacies 
a  presumptive  claim  to  nearer  relationship,  why,  then  Diana 
was  astonished  —  of  course  she  had  regarded  them  as  her 
cousins  !  and  she  was  sure  she  could  n't  think  what  they 
could  be  dreaming  of  —  "  A  cousin  is  just  like  a  brother, 
you  know." 


MISS   DIANA  257 

This  was  just  what  James  Pitkin  did  not  believe  in,  and 
now  as  he  is  walking  over  hill  and  dale  from  Cambridge 
College  to  his  father's  house  he  is  gathering  up  a  decided 
resolution  to  tell  Diana  that  he  is  not  and  will  not  be  to 
her  as  a  brother  —  that  she  must  be  to  him  all  or  nothing. 
James  is  the  brightest,  the  tallest,  and,  the  Mapleton  girls 
said,  the  handsomest  of  the  Pitkin  boys.  He  is  a  strong- 
hearted,  generous,  resolute  fellow  as  ever  undertook  to 
walk  thirty-five  miles  home  to  eat  his  Thanksgiving  dinner. 
We  are  not  sure  that  Miss  Diana  is  not  thinking  of  him 
quite  as  much  as  he  of  her,  as  she  stands  there  with  the 
long  kitchen  shovel  in  one  hand,  and  one  plump  white  arm 
thrust  into  the  oven,  and  her  little  head  cocked  on  one 
side,  her  brows  bent,  and  her  rosy  mouth  pursed  up  with  a 
solemn  sense  of  the  importance  of  her  judgment  as  she  is 
testing  the  heat  of  her  oven.  Oh,  Di,  Di !  for  all  you 
seem  to  have  nothing  on  your  mind  but  the  responsibility 
for  all  those  pumpkin  pies  and  cranberry  tarts,  we  would  n't 
venture  a  very  large  wager  that  you  are  not  thinking  about 
cousin  James  under  it  all  at  this  very  minute,  and  that  all 
this  pretty  bustling  house wifeliness  owes  its  spice  and  flavor 
to  the  thought  that  James  is  coming  to  the  Thanksgiving 
dinner.  To  be  sure  if  any  one  had  told  Di  so,  she  would 
have  flouted  the  very  idea.  Besides,  she  had  privately  in 
formed  Almira  Sisson,  her  special  particular  confidante,  that 
she  knew  Jim  would  come  home  from  college  full  of  con 
ceit,  and  thinking  that  everybody  must  bow  down  to  him, 
and  for  her  part  she  meant  to  make  him  know  his  place. 
Of  course  Jim  and  she  were  good  friends,  etc.,  etc. 

Oh,  Di,  Di !  you  silly,  naughty  girl,  was  it  for  this  that 
you  stood  so  long  at  your  looking-glass  last  night,  arranging 
how  you  would  do  your  hair  for  the  Thanksgiving  night 
dance  ?  Those  killing  bows  which  you  deliberately  fabri 
cated  and  lodged  like  bright  butterflies  among  the  dark  waves 
of  your  hair  —  who  were  you  thinking  of  as  you  made  and 


258  DEACON  PITKIN'S  FARM 

posed  them  ?  Lay  your  hand  on  your  heart  and  say  who 
to  you  has  ever  seemed  the  best,  the  truest,  the  bravest  and 
kindest  of  your  friends.  But  Di  doesn't  trouble  herself 
with  such  thoughts  —  she  only  cuts  out  saucy  mottoes  from 
the  flaky  white  paste  to  lay  on  the  red  cranberry  tarts,  of 
which  she  makes  a  special  one  for  each  cousin.  For  there 
is  Bill,  the  second  eldest,  who  stays  at  home  and  helps  work 
the  farm.  She  knows  that  Bill  worships  her  very  shoe-tie, 
and  obeys  all  her  mandates  with  the  faithful  docility  of  a 
good  Newfoundland  dog,  and  Di  says  "  she  thinks  every 
thing  of  Bill  —  she  likes  Bill."  So  she  does  Ed,  who  comes 
a  year  or  two  behind  Bill,  and  is  trembling  out  of  bashful 
boyhood.  So  she  does  Eob  and  Ike  and  Pete  and  the  whole 
healthy,  ramping  train  who  fill  the  Pitkin  farmhouse  with 
a  racket  of  boots  and  boys.  So  she  has  made  every  one  a 
tart  with  his  initial  on  it  and  a  saucy  motto  or  two,  "just 
to  keep  them  from  being  conceited,  you  know." 

All  day  she  keeps  busy  by  the  side  of  the  deacon's  wife, 
—  a  delicate,  thin,  quiet  little  woman,  with  great  thoughtful 
eyes  and  a  step  like  a  snowflake.  New  England  had  of  old 
times,  and  has  still,  perhaps,  in  her  farmhouses,  these  wo 
men,  who  seem  from  year  to  year  to  develop  in  the  spiritual 
sphere  as  the  bodily  form  shrinks  and  fades.  While  the 
cheek  grows  thin  and  the  form  spare,  the  will  power  grows 
daily  stronger ;  though  the  outer  man  perish,  the  inner  man 
is  renewed  day  by  day.  The  worn  hand  that  seems  so  weak 
yet  holds  every  thread  and  controls  every  movement  of  the 
most  complex  family  life,  and  wonders  are  daily  accom 
plished  by  the  presence  of  a  woman  who  seems  little  more 
than  a  spirit.  The  New  England  wife-mother  was  the  one 
little  jeweled  pivot  on  which  all  the  wheel  work  of  the 
family  moved. 

"  Well,  have  n't  we  done  a  good  day's  work,  cousin  ?  " 
says  Diana,  when  ninety  pies  of  every  ilk  —  quince,  apple, 
cranberry,  pumpkin,  and  mince  —  have  been  all  safely  de- 


BIAH   CARTER  259 

livered  from  the  oven  and  carried  up  into  the  great  vacant 
chamber,  where,  ranged  in  rows  and  frozen  solid,  they  are 
to  last  over  New  Year's  Day !  She  adds,  demonstratively 
clasping  the  little  woman  round  the  neck,  and  leaning  her 
bright  cheek  against  her  whitening  hair,  "  Have  n't  we  been 
smart  ? "  And  the  calm,  thoughtful  eyes  turn  lovingly 
upon  her  as  Mary  Pitkin  puts  her  arm  round  her  and  an 
swers  :  — 

"  Yes,  my  daughter,  you  have  done  wonderfully.  We 
could  n't  do  without  you  !  " 

And  Diana  lifts  her  head  and  laughs.  She  likes  petting 
and  praising  as  a  cat  likes  being  stroked ;  but,  for  all  that, 
the  little  puss  has  her  claws  and  a  sly  notion  of  using  them. 

CHAPTER  II 

BIAH    CARTER 

It  was  in  the  flush  and  glow  of  a  gorgeous  sunset  that 
you  might  have  seen  the  dark  form  of  the  Pitkin  farmhouse 
rising  on  a  green  hill  against  the  orange  sky.  The  red 
house,  with  its  overhanging  canopy  of  elm,  stood  out  like 
an  old  missal  picture  done  on  a  gold  ground.  Through  the 
glimmer  of  the  yellow  twilight  might  be  seen  the  stacks  of 
dry  cornstalks  and  heaps  of  golden  pumpkins  in  the  neigh 
boring  fields,  from  which  the  slow  oxen  were  bringing  home 
a  cart  well  laden  with  farm  produce. 

It  was  the  hour  before  supper  time,  and  Biah  Carter,  the 
deacon's  hired  man,  was  leaning  against  a  fence,  waiting  for 
his  evening  meal ;  indulging  the  while  in  a  stream  of  con 
versational  wisdom  which  seemed  to  flow  all  the  more  freely 
from  having  been  dammed  up  through  the  labors  of  the 
day. 

Biah  was,  in  those  far  distant  times  of  simplicity,  a  "  mute 
inglorious  "  newspaper  man.  Newspapers  in  those  days  were 


260  DEACON  PITKIN'S  FAKM 

as  rare  and  unheard  of  as  steam  cars  or  the  telegraph,  but 
Biah  had  within  him  all  the  making  of  a  thriving  modern 
reporter,  and  no  paper  to  use  it  on.  He  was  a  walking 
biographical  and  statistical  dictionary  of  all  the  affairs  of 
the  good  folks  of  Mapleton.  He  knew  every  piece  of  fur 
niture  in  their  houses,  and  what  they  gave  for  it ;  every 
foot  of  land,  and  what  it  was  worth  ;  every  ox,  ass,  and 
sheep ;  every  man,  woman,  and  child  in  town.  And  Biah 
could  give  pretty  shrewd  character  pictures  also,  and  who 
ever  wanted  to  inform  himself  of  the  status  of  any  person 
or  thing  in  Mapleton  would  have  done  well  to  have  turned 
the  faucet  of  Biah's  stream  of  talk,  and  watched  it  respect 
fully  as  it  came,  for  it  was  commonly  conceded  that  what 
Biah  Carter  did  n't  know  about  Mapleton  was  hardly  worth 
knowing. 

"  Putty  piece  o'  property,  this  'ere  farm,"  he  said,  survey 
ing  the  scene  around  him  with  the  air  of  a  connoisseur. 
"  None  o'  yer  stun  pastur  land  where  the  sheep  can't  get 
their  noses  down  through  the  rocks  without  a  file  to  sharpen 
'em  !  Deacon  Pitkin  did  a  putty  fair  stroke  o'  business 
when  he  swapped  off  his  old  place  for  this  'ere.  That  'ere 
old  place  was  all  swamp  land  and  stun  pastur  ;  wa'n't  good 
for  raisin'  nothin'  but  juniper  bushes  and  bullfrogs.  But 
I  tell  yen"  proceeded  Biah,  with  a  shrewd  wink,  "  that  'ere 
mortgage  pinches  the  deacon  ;  works  him  like  a  dose  of  aloes 
and  picry,  it  does.  Deacon  fairly  gets  lean  on't." 

"  Why,"  said  Abner  Jenks,  a  stolid  plough-boy  to  whom 
this  stream  of  remark  was  addressed ;  "  this  'ere  place  ain't 
mortgaged,  is  it  ?  Du  tell,  naow  !  " 

"  Why,  yis  ;  don't  ye  know  that  ?ere  ?  Why,  there 's 
risin'  two  thousand  dollars  due  on  this  'ere  farm,  and  if  the 
deacon  don't  scratch  for  it  and  pay  up  squar  to  the  minit, 
old  Squire  Norcross  '11  foreclose  on  him.  Old  squire  hain't 
no  bowels,  I  tell  yeu,  and  the  deacon  knows  he  hain't :  and 
I  tell  yeu  it  keeps  the  deacon  dancin'  lively  as  corn  on  a 
hot  shovel." 


BIAH   CARTER  261 

"The  deacon 's  a  master  hand  to  work,"  said  Abner ;  "so's 
the  boys." 

"  Wai,  yis,  the  deacon  is,"  said  Biah,  turning  contempla 
tively  to  the  farmhouse ;  "  there  ain't  a  crittur  in  that  'ere 
house  that  there  ain't  the  most  work  got  out  of  'em  that 
ken  be,  down  to  Jed  and  Sam,  the  little  uns.  They  work 
like  tigers,  every  soul  of  'em,  from  four  o'clock  in  the 
mornin'  as  long  as  they  can  see,  and  Mis'  Pitkin  she  works 
all  the  evening  —  woman's  work  ain't  never  done,  they 
say." 

"  She 's  a  good  woman,  Mis'  Pitkin  is,"  said  Abner,  "  and 
she  's  a  smart  worker." 

In  this  phrase  Abner  solemnly  expressed  his  highest  ideal 
of  a  human  being. 

"  Smart  ain't  no  word  for  't,"  said  Biah,  with  alertness. 
"Declar  for  't,  the  grit  o'  that  'ere  woman  beats  me.  Had 
eight  children  right  along  in  a  string  'thout  stoppin',  done 
all  her  own  work,  never  kep'  no  gal  nor  nothin' ;  allers  up 
and  dressed;  allers  to  meetin'  Sunday,  and  to  the  prayer- 
meetin'  weekly,  and  never  stops  workin' :  when  't ain't  one 
thing  it 's  another  —  cookin',  washin',  ironin',  making  but 
ter  and  cheese,  and  'tween  spells  cuttin'  and  sewin',  and  if 
she  ain't  doin'  that,  why,  she  's  braidin'  straw  to  sell  to  the 
store  or  knitting, —  she 's  the  perpetual  motion  ready  found, 
Mis'  Pitkin  is." 

"  Want  ter  know,"  said  the  auditor,  as  a  sort  of  musical 
rest  in  this  monotone  of  talk.  "  Ain't  she  smart,  though !  " 

"  Smart !  Well,  I  should  think  she  was.  She 's  over  and 
into  everything  that 's  goin'  on  in  that  house.  The  deacon 
would  n't  know  himself  without  her  ;  nor  would  n't  none  of 
them  boys,  they  just  live  out  of  her ;  she  kind  o'  keeps  'em 
all  up." 

"Wai,  she  ain't  a  hefty  woman,  naow,"  said  the  inter 
locutor,  who  seemed  to  be  possessed  by  a  dim  idea  that  worth 
must  be  weighed  by  the  pound. 


262  DEACON  PITKIN'S  FARM 

"  Law  bless  you,  no  !  She  's  a  little  crittur  ;  nothiri'  to 
look  to,  but  every  bit  in  her  is  live.  She  looks  pale,  kind 
o'  slips  round  still  like  moonshine,  but  where  anything 's  to 
be  done,  there  Mis'  Pitkin  is ;  and  her  hand  allers  goes  to 
the  right  spot,  and  things  is  done  afore  ye  know  it.  That 
'ere  woman  's  kind  o'  still ;  she  '11  slip  off  and  be  gone  to 
heaven  some  day  afore  folks  know  it.  There  comes  the 
deacon  and  Jim  over  the  hill.  Jim  walked  home  from 
college  day  'fore  yesterday,  and  turned  right  in  to-day  to 
help  get  in  the  taters,  workin'  right  along.  Deacon  was 
awful  grouty." 

"  What  was  the  matter  o'  the  deacon  ?  " 

"  Oh,  the  mortgage  kind  o'  works  him.  The  time  to  pay 
comes  round  putty  soon,  and  the  deacon's  face  allers  goes 
down  long  as  yer  arm.  'T  is  a  putty  tight  pull  havin'  Jim 
in  college,  losin'  his  work  and  havin'  term  bills  and  things 
to  pay.  Them  'ere  college  folks  charges  up,  I  tell  you.  I 
seen  it  works  the  deacon,  I  heard  him  a-jawin'  Jim  'bout  it." 

"  What  made  Jim  go  to  college  ?  "  said  Abner  with  slow 
wonder  in  his  heavy  face. 

"  Oh,  he  allers  was  sot  on  eddication,  and  Mis'  Pitkin 
she  's  sot  on't,  too,  in  her  softly  way,  and  softly  women  is 
them  that  giner'lly  carries  their  p'ints,  fust  or  last. 

"  But  there  's  one  that  ain't  softly !  "  Biah  suddenly 
continued,  as  the  vision  of  a  black-haired,  bright-eyed  girl 
suddenly  stepped  forth  from  the  doorway,  and  stood  shading 
her  face  with  her  hands,  looking  towards  the  sunset.  The 
evening  light  lit  up  a  jaunty  spray  of  goldenrod  that  she 
had  wreathed  in  her  wavy  hair,  and  gave  a  glow  to  the 
rounded  outlines  of  her  handsome  form.  "  There  's  a  spar 
kler  for  you !  And  no  saint,  neither  !  "  was  Biah's  comment. 
"  That  crittur  has  got  more  prances  and  capers  in  her  than 
any  three-year-old  filly  I  knows  on.  He  '11  be  cunning  that 
ever  gets  a  bridle  on  her." 

"  Some   says  she  's  going  to  hev  Jim  Pitkin,  and  some 


THE   SHADOW  263 

says  it  7s  Bill,"  said  Abner,  delighted  to  be  able  to  add  his 
mite  of  gossip  to  the  stream  while  it  was  flowing. 

"  She 's  sweet  on  Jim  while  he 's  round,  and  she 's  sweet 
on  Bill  when  Jim 's  up  to  college,  and  between  um  she  gets 
took  round  to  everything  that  's  going.  She  gives  one  a  word 
over  one  shoulder,  and  one  over  t'other,  and  if  the  Lord 
above  knows  what 's  in  that  gal's  mind  or  what  she 's  up 
to,  he  knows  more  than  I  do,  or  she  either,  else  I  lose  my 
bet." 

Biah  made  this  admission  with  a  firmness  that  might 
have  been  a  model  to  theologians  or  philosophers  in  general. 
There  was  a  point,  it  appeared,  where  he  was  not  omni 
scient.  His  universal  statistical  knowledge  had  a  limit. 

CHAPTER  III 

( 

THE    SHADOW 

There  is  no  moment  of  life,  however  festive,  that  does 
not  involve  the  near  presence  of  a  possible  tragedy.  When 
the  concert  of  life  is  playing  the  gayest  and  airiest  music, 
it  requires  only  the  change  of  a  little  flat  or  sharp  to  mod 
ulate  into  the  minor  key.  There  seemed  at  first  glance 
only  the  elements  of  joyousness  and  gayety  in  the  surround 
ings  at  the  Pitkin  farm.  Thanksgiving  was  come,  —  the 
family,  healthy,  rosy,  and  noisy,  were  all  under  the  one 
roof-tree.  There  was  energy,  youth,  intelligence,  beauty,  a 
pair  of  lovers  on  the  eve  of  betrothal, — just  in  that  misty, 
golden  twilight  that  precedes  the  full  sunrise  of  avowed 
and  accepted  love,  —  and  yet  behind  it  all  was  walking  with 
stealthy  step  the  shadow  of  a  coming  sorrow. 

"  What  in  the  world  ails  James  ?  "  said  Diana,  as  she 
retreated  from  the  door  and  surveyed  him  at  a  distance 
from  her  chamber  window.  His  face  was  like  a  landscape 
over  which  a  thundercloud  has  drifted,  and  he  walked 


264  DEACON  PITKIN'S  FARM 

beside  his  father  with  a  peculiar  air  of  proud  displeasure 
and  repression.  At  that  moment  the  young  man  was  strug 
gling  with  the  bitterest  sorrow  that  can  befall  youth,  —  the 
breaking  up  of  his  life-purpose.  He  had  just  come  to  a 
decision  to  sacrifice  his  hopes  of  education,  his  man's  am 
bition,  his  love,  his  home  and  family,  and  become  a  wanderer 
on  the  face  of  the  earth.  How  this  befell  requires  a  sketch 
of  character. 

Deacon  Silas  Pitkin  was  a  fair  specimen  of  a  class  of  men 
not  uncommon  in  New  England,  —  men  too  sensitive  for  the 
severe  physical  conditions  of  New  England  life,  and  there 
fore  both  suffering  and  inflicting  suffering.  He  was  a  man 
of  the  finest  moral  traits,  of  incorruptible  probity,  of  scru 
pulous  honor,  of  an  exacting  conscientiousness,  and  of  a 
sincere  piety.  But  he  had  begun  life  with  nothing  ;  his 
whole  standing  in  the  world  had  been  gained  inch  by  inch 
by  the  most  unremitting  economy  and  self-denial,  and  he 
was  a  man  of  little  capacity  for  hope,  of  whom  it  was  said, 
in  popular  phraseology,  that  he  "  took  things  hard."  He 
was  never  sanguine  of  good,  always  expectant  of  evil,  and 
seemed  to  view  life  like  a  sentinel  forbidden  to  sleep  and 
constantly  under  arms.  For  such  a  man  to  be  harassed  by 
a  mortgage  upon  his  homestead  was  a  steady  wear  and  drain 
upon  his  vitality.  There  were  times  when  a  positive  hor 
ror  of  darkness  came  down  upon  him,  —  when  his  wife's 
untroubled,  patient  hopefulness  seemed  to  him  like  reck 
lessness,  when  the  smallest  item  of  expense  was  an  intol 
erable  burden,  and  the  very  daily  bread  of  life  was  full  of 
bitterness  ;  and  when  these  paroxysms  were  upon  him,  one 
of  the  heaviest  of  his  burdens  was  the  support  of  his  son  in 
college.  It  was  true  that  he  was  proud  of  his  son's  talents 
and  sympathized  with  his  love  for  learning,  —  he  had  to  the 
full  that  sense  of  the  value  of  education  which  is  the  very 
vital  force  of  the  New  England  mind,  —  and  in  an  hour 
when  things  looked  brighter  to  him  he  had  given  his  con- 


THE   SHADOW  265 

sent  to  the  scheme  of  a  college  education  freely.  James 
was  industrious,  frugal,  energetic,  and  had  engaged  to  pay 
the  most  of  his  own  expenses  by  teaching  in  the  long 
winter  vacations.  But  unfortunately  this  year  the  Mapleton 
Academy,  which  had  been  promised  to  him  for  the  winter 
term,  had  been  taken  away  by  a  little  manoeuvre  of  local 
politics  and  given  to  another,  thus  leaving  him  without 
resource.  This  disappointment,  coming  just  at  the  time 
when  the  yearly  interest  upon  the  mortgage  was  due,  had 
brought  upon  his  father  one  of  those  paroxysms  of  helpless 
gloom  and  discouragement  in  which  the  very  world  itself 
seemed  clothed  in  sackcloth. 

From  the  time  that  he  heard  the  Academy  was  gone, 
Deacon  Silas  lay  awake  nights  in  the  blackness  of  darkness. 
"  We  shall  all  go  to  the  poorhouse  together,  —  that  7s 
where  it  will  end,"  he  said,  as  he  tossed  restlessly  in  the 
dark. 

"  Oh,  no,  no,  my  dear,"  said  his  wife,  with  those  serene 
eyes  that  had  looked  through  so  many  gloomy  hours ;  "  we 
must  cast  our  care  on  God." 

"  It 's  easy  for  women  to  talk.  You  don't  have  the  in 
terest  money  to  pay,  you  are  perfectly  reckless  of  expense. 
Nothing  would  do  but  James  must  go  to  college,  and  now 
see  what  it 's  bringing  us  to  !  " 

"  Why,  father,  I  thought  you  yourself  were  in  favor  of 
it." 

"  Well,  I  did  wrong  then.  You  persuaded  me  into  it. 
I  'd  no  business  to  have  listened  to  you  and  Jim  and  got  all 
this  load  on  my  shoulders." 

Yet  Mary  Pitkin  knew  in  her  own  calm,  clear  head  that 
she  had  not  been  reckless  of  expense.  The  yearly  interest 
money  was  ever  before  her,  and  her  own  incessant  toils  had 
wrought  no  small  portion  of  what  was  needed  to  pay  it. 
Her  butter  at  the  store  commanded  the  very  highest  price, 
her  straw  braiding  sold  for  a  little  more  than  that  of  any 


266  DEACON  PITKIN'S  FARM 

other  hand,  and  she  had  calculated  all  the  returns  so  exactly 
that  she  felt  sure  that  the  interest  money  for  that  year  was 
safe.  She  had  seen  her  husband  pass  through  this  nervous 
crisis  many  times  before,  and  she  had  learned  to  be  blamed 
in  silence,  for  she  was  a  woman  out  of  whom  all  selfness 
had  long  since  died,  leaving  only  the  tender  pity  of  the 
nurse  and  the  consoler.  Her  soul  rested  on  her  Saviour, 
the  one  ever-present,  inseparable  friend  ;  and  when  it  did 
no  good  to  speak  to  her  husband,  she  spoke  to  her  God  for 
him,  and  so  was  peaceful  and  peace-giving. 

Even  her  husband  himself  felt  her  strengthening,  rest- 
giving  power,  and  for  this  reason  he  bore  down  on  her  with 
the  burden  of  all  his  tremors  and  his  cares ;  for  while  he 
disputed,  he  yet  believed  her,  and  rested  upon  her  with  an 
utter  helpless  trust,  as  the  good  angel  of  his  house.  Had 
she  for  a  moment  given  way  to  apprehension,  had  her  step 
been  a  thought  less  firm,  her  eye  less  peaceful,  then,  indeed, 
the  world  itself  would  have  seemed  to  be  sinking  under  his 
feet.  Meanwhile  she  was  to  him  that  kind  of  relief  which 
we  derive  from  a  person  to  whom  we  may  say  everything 
without  a  fear  of  its  harming  them.  He  felt  quite  sure 
that,  say  what  he  would,  Mary  would  always  be  hopeful 
and  courageous ;  and  he  felt  some  secret  idea  that  his  own 
gloomy  forebodings  were  of  service  in  restricting  and  sober 
ing  what  seemed  to  him  her  too  sanguine  nature.  He  blindly 
reverenced,  without  ability  fully  to  comprehend,  her  exalted 
religious  fervor  and  the  quietude  of  soul  that  it  brought. 
But  he  did  not  know  through  how  many  silent  conflicts, 
how  many  prayers,  how  many  tears,  how  many  hopes  re 
signed  and  sorrows  welcomed,  she  had  come  into  that  last  ref 
uge  of  sorrowful  souls,  that  immovable  peace  when  all  life's 
anguish  ceases  and  the  will  of  God  becomes  the  final  rest. 

But  unhappily  for  this  present  crisis,  there  was,  as  there 
often  is  in  family  life,  just  enough  of  the  father's  nature  in 
the  son  to  bring  them  into  collision  with  each  other.  James 


THE   SHADOW  267 

had  the  same  nervously  anxious  nature,  the  same  intense 
feeling  of  responsibility,  the  same  tendency  towards  mor 
bid  earnestness ;  and  on  that  day  there  had  come  collision. 
His  father  had  poured  forth  upon  him  his  fears  and  appre 
hensions  in  a  manner  which  implied  a  censure  on  his  son, 
as  being  willing  to  accept  a  life  of  scholarly  ease  while  his 
father  and  mother  were,  as  he  expressed  it,  "  working  their 
lives  away." 

"  But  I  tell  you,  father,  as  God  is  my  witness,  I  mean  to 
pay  all  ;  you  shall  not  suffer  ;  interest  and  principal  —  all 
that  my  work  would  bring  —  I  engage  to  pay  back." 

"  You  !  —  you  '11  never  have  anything  !  You  '11  be  a 
poor  man  as  long  as  you  live.  Lost  the  Academy  this  fall 
—  that  tells  the  story !  " 

"But,  father,  it  wasn't  my  fault  that  I  lost  the  Academy." 

"  It 's  no  matter  whose  fault  it  was  —  that 's  neither  here 
nor  there  —  you  lost  it,  and  here  you  are  with  the  vacation 
before  you  and  nothing  to  do  !  There  's  your  mother,  she  's 
working  herself  to  death ;  she  never  gets  any  rest.  I  ex 
pect  she  '11  go  off  in  a  consumption  one  of  these  days." 

"  There,  there,  father  !  that 's  enough  !  Please  don't  say 
any  more.  You  '11  see  I  will  find  something  to  do !  " 

There  are  words  spoken  at  times  in  life  that  do  not  sound 
bitter  though  they  come  from  a  pitiable  depth  of  anguish, 
and  as  James  turned  from  his  father  he  had  taken  a  resolu 
tion  that  convulsed  him  with  pain ;  his  strong  arms  quiv 
ered  with  the  repressed  agony,  and  he  hastily  sought  a 
distant  part  of  the  field,  and  began  cutting  and  stacking 
cornstalks  with  a  nervous  energy. 

"  Why,  ye  work  like  thunder  !  "  was  Biah's  comment. 
"  Book-1'arnin'  hain't  spiled  ye  yet ;  your  arms  are  good  for 
suthin'." 

"  Yes,  my  arms  are  good  for  something,  and  I  '11  use  them 
for  something,"  said  Jim. 

There  was  raging  a  tempest  in  his  soul.     For  a  young 


268  DEACON  PITKIN'S  FARM 

fellow  of  a  Puritan  education  in  those  days  to  be  angry  with 
his  father  was  somewhat  that  seemed  to  him  as  awful  a  sac 
rilege  as  to  be  angry  with  his  God,  and  yet  he  felt  that  his 
father  had  been  bitterly,  cruelly  unjust  towards  him.  He 
had  driven  economy  to  the  most  stringent  extremes  ;  he  had 
avoided  the  intimacy  of  his  class  fellows,  lest  he  should  be 
drawn  into  needless  expenses ;  he  had  borne  with  shabby 
clothing  and  mean  fare  among  better  dressed  and  richer  as 
sociates,  and  been  willing  to  bear  it.  He  had  studied  faith 
fully,  unremittingly,  for  two  years,  but  at  the  moment  he 
turned  from  his  father  the  throb  that  wrung  his  heart  was 
the  giving  up  of  all. 

He  had  in  his  pocket  a  letter  from  his  townsman  and 
schoolmate,  Sam  Allen,  mate  of  an  East  Indiaman  just  fit 
ting  out  at  Salem,  and  it  said  :  — 

"  We  are  going  to  sail  with  a  picked  crew,  and  we  want 
one  just  such  a  fellow  as  you  for  third  mate.  Come  along, 
and  you  can  go  right  up,  and  your  college  mathematics  will 
be  all  the  better  for  us.  Come  right  off,  and  youc  berth 
will  be  ready,  and  away  for  round  the  world !  " 

Here,  to  be  sure,  was  immediate  position  —  wages  —  em 
ployment —  freedom  from  the  intolerable  burden  of  depen 
dence  ;  but  it  was  accepted  at  the  sacrifice  of  all  his  life's 
hopes.  True,  that  in  those  days  the  experiment  of  a  sea 
faring  life  had  often,  even  in  instances  which  he  recalled, 
brought  forth  fortune  and  an  ability  to  settle  down  in  peace 
ful  competence  in  after  life.  But  there  was  Diana.  Would 
she  wait  for  him  ?  Encircled  on  all  sides  with  lovers,  would 
she  keep  faith  with  an  adventurer  gone  for  an  indefinite 
quest  ?  The  desponding,  self-distrusting  side  of  his  nature 
said,  "  No.  Why  should  she  ?  "  Then,  to  go  was  to  give 
up  Diana  —  to  make  up  his  mind  to  have  her  belong  to 
some  other.  Then  there  was  his  mother.  An  unutterable 
reverential  pathos  always  to  him  encircled  the  idea  of  his 
mother.  Her  life  to  him  seemed  a  hard  one.  From  the 


THE    GOOD-BY  269 

outside,  as  he  viewed  it,  it  was  all  self-sacrifice  and  renuncia 
tion.  Yet  he  knew  that  she  had  set  her  heart  on  an  educa 
tion  for  him,  as  much  as  it  could  be  set  on  anything  earthly. 
He  was  her  pride,  her  hope  ;  and  just  now  that  very  thought 
was  full  of  bitterness.  There  was  no  help  for  it ;  he  must 
not  let  her  work  herself  to  death  for  him ;  he  would  make 
the  household  vessel  lighter  by  the  throwing  himself  into 
the  sea,  to  sink  or  swim  as  might  happen ;  and  then,  per 
haps,  he  might  come  back  with  money  to  help  them  all. 

All  this  was  what  was  surging  and  boiling  in  his  mind 
when  he  came  in  from  his  work  to  the  supper  that  night. 

CHAPTER  IV 

THE    GOOD-BY 

Diana  Pitkin  was  like  some  of  the  fruits  of  her  native 
hills,  full  of  juices  which  tend  to  sweetness  in  maturity, 
but  which  when  not  quite  ripe  have  a  pretty  decided  dash 
of  sharpness.  There  are  grapes  that  require  a  frost  to  ripen 
them,  and  Diana  was  somewhat  akin  to  these. 

She  was  a  mettlesome,  warm-blooded  creature,  full  of  the 
energy  and  audacity  of  youth,  to  whom  as  yet  life  was  only 
a  frolic  and  a  play  spell.  Work  never  tired  her.  She  ate 
heartily,  slept  peacefully,  went  to  bed  laughing,  and  got  up 
in  a  merry  humor  in  the  morning.  Diana's  laugh  was  as 
early  a  note  as  the  song  of  birds.  Such  a  nature  is  not  at 
first  sympathetic.  It  has  in  it  some  of  the  unconscious  cru 
elty  which  belongs  to  nature  itself,  whose  sunshine  never 
pales  at  human  trouble.  Eyes  that  have  never  wept  cannot 
comprehend  sorrow.  Moreover,  a  lively  girl  of  eighteen, 
looking  at  life  out  of  eyes  which  bewilder  others  with  their 
brightness,  does  not  always  see  the  world  truly,  and  is  some 
times  judged  to  be  heartless  when  she  is  only  immature. 

Nothing  was  further  from  Diana's  thoughts  than  that  any 


270  DEACON  PITKIN'S  FARM 

grave  trouble  was  overhanging  her  lover's  mind  —  for  her 
lover  she  very  well  knew  that  James  was,  and  she  had 
arranged  beforehand  to  herself  very  pretty  little  comedies  of 
life  to  be  duly  enacted  in  the  long  vacation,  in  which  James 
was  to  appear  as  the  suitor,  and  she,  not  too  soon  nor  with 
too  much  eagerness,  was  at  last  to  acknowledge  to  him  how 
much  he  was  to  her.  But  meanwhile  he  was  not  to  be  too 
presumptuous.  It  was  not  set  down  in  the  cards  that  she 
should  be  too  gracious  or  make  his  way  too  easy.  When, 
therefore,  he  brushed  by  her  hastily,  on  entering  the  house, 
with  a  flushed  cheek  and  frowning  brow,  and  gave  no  glance 
of  admiration  at  the  pretty  toilet  she  had  found  time  to 
make,  she  was  slightly  indignant.  She  was  as  ignorant  of 
the  pang  which  went  like  an  arrow  through  his  heart  at  the 
sight  of  her  as  the  bobolink  which  whirs  and  chitters  and 
tweedles  over  a  grave. 

She  turned  away  and  commenced  a  kitten-like  frolic  with 
Bill,  who  was  always  only  too  happy  to  second  any  of  her 
motions,  and  readily  promised  that  after  supper  she  would 
go  with  him  a  walk  of  half  a  mile  over  to  a  neighbor's, 
where  was  a  corn-husking.  A  great  golden  lamp  of  a  har 
vest  moon  was  already  coming  up  in  the  fading  flush  of  the 
evening  sky,  and  she  promised  herself  much  amusement  in 
watching  the  result  of  her  manoauvre  on  James. 

"  He  711  see  at  any  rate  that  I  am  not  waiting  his  beck 
and  call.  Next  time  if  he  wants  my  company  he  can  ask 
for  it  in  season.  I  'm  not  going  to  indulge  him  in  sulks, 
not  I.  These  college  fellows  worry  over  books  till  they 
hurt  their  digestion,  and  then  have  the  blues  and  look  as  if 
the  world  was  coming  to  an  end."  And  Diana  went  to  the 
looking-glass  and  rearranged  the  spray  of  goldenrod  in  her 
hair  and  nodded  at  herself  defiantly,  and  then  turned  to 
help  get  on  the  supper. 

The  Pitkin  folk  that  night  sat  down  to  an  ample  feast, 
over  which  the  impending  Thanksgiving  shed  its  hilarity. 


THE   GOOD-BY  271 

There  was  not  only  the  inevitable  great  pewter  platter, 
scoured  to  silver  brightness,  in  the  centre  of  the  table,  and 
piled  with  solid  masses  of  boiled  beef,  pork,  cabbage  and  all 
sorts  of  vegetables,  and  the  equally  inevitable  smoking  loaf 
of  rye  and  Indian  bread,  to  accompany  the  pot  of  baked 
pork  and  beans,  but  there  were  specimens  of  all  the  newly 
made  Thanksgiving  pies  filling  every  available  space  on  the 
table.  Diana  set  special  value  on  herself  as  a  pie  artist, 
and  she  had  taxed  her  ingenuity  this  year  to  invent  new 
varieties,  which  were  received  with  bursts  of  applause  by 
the  boys.  These  sat  down  to  the  table  in  democratic  equal 
ity,  —  Biah  Carter  and  Abner  with  all  the  sons  of  the  fam 
ily,  old  and  young,  each  eager,  hungry  and  noisy  ;  and  over 
all,  with  moonlight  calmness  and  steadiness,  Mary  Pitkin 
ruled  and  presided,  dispensing  to  each  his  portion  in  due 
season,  while  Diana,  restless  and  mischievous  as  a  sprite, 
seemed  to  be  possessed  with  an  elfin  spirit  of  drollery,  vent 
ing  itself  in  sundry  little  tricks  and  antics  which  drew  ready 
laughs  from  the  boys  and  reproving  glances  from  the  deacon. 
For  the  deacon  was  that  night  in  one  of  his  severest  humors. 
As  Biah  Carter  afterwards  remarked  of  that  night,  "  You 
could  feel  there  was  thunder  in  the  air  somewhere  round. 
The  deacon  had  got  on  about  his  longest  face,  and  when 
the  deacon's  face  is  about  down  to  its  wust,  why,  it  would 
stop  a  robin  singin'  —  there  could  n't  nothin'  stan'  it." 

To-night  the  severely  cut  lines  of  his  face  had  even  more 
than  usual  of  haggard  sternness,  and  the  handsome  features 
of  James  beside  him,  in  their  fixed  gravity,  presented  that 
singular  likeness  which  often  comes  out  between  father  and 
son  in  seasons  of  mental  emotion.  Diana  in  vain  sought  to 
draw  a  laugh  from  her  cousin.  In  pouring  his  home-brewed 
beer  she  contrived  to  spatter  him,  but  he  wiped  it  off  with 
out  a  smile,  and  let  pass  in  silence  some  arrows  of  raillery 
that  she  had  directed  at  his  sombre  face.  When  they  rose 
from  table,  however,  he  followed  her  into  the  pantry. 


272  DEACON  PITKIN'S  FARM 

"  Diana,  will  you  take  a  walk  with  me  to-night  ?  "  he 
said,  in  a  voice  husky  with  repressed  feeling. 

"  To-night !  Why,  I  have  just  promised  Bill  to  go  with 
him  over  to  the  husking  at  the  Jenks's.  Why  don't  you 
go  with  us  ?  We  7re  going  to  have  lots  of  fun,"  she  added 
with  an  innocent  air  of  not  perceiving  his  gravity. 

"  I  can't,"  he  said.  "  Besides,  I  wanted  to  walk  with 
you  alone.  I  had  something  special  I  wanted  to  say." 

"  Bless  me,  how  you  frighten  one  !  You  look  solemn  as 
a  hearse  ;  but  I  promised  to  go  with  Bill  to-night,  and  I 
suspect  another  time  will  do  just  as  well.  What  you  have 
to  say  will  keep,  I  suppose,"  she  said  mischievously. 

He  turned  away  quickly. 

"  I  should  really  like  to  know  what 's  the  matter  with 
you  to-night,"  she  added,  but  as  she  spoke  he  went  upstairs 
and  shut  the  door. 

"He's  cross  to-night,"  was  Diana's  comment.  "Well, 
he  '11  have  to  get  over  his  pet.  I  sha'n't  mind  it !  " 

Upstairs  in  his  room  James  began  the  work  of  putting 
up  the  bundle  with  which  he  was  to  go  forth  to  seek  his 
fortune.  There  stood  his  books,  silent  and  dear  witnesses 
of  the  world  of  hope  and  culture  and  refined  enjoyment  he 
had  been  meaning  to  enter.  He  was  to  know  them  no 
more.  Their  mute  faces  seemed  to  look  at  him  mournfully 
as  parting  friends.  He  rapidly  made  his  selection,  for  that 
night  he  was  to  be  off  in  time  to  reach  the  vessel  before  she 
sailed,  and  he  felt  even  glad  to  avoid  the  Thanksgiving  fes 
tivities  for  which  he  had  so  little  relish.  Diana's  frolicsome 
gayety  seemed  heartbreaking  to  him,  on  the  same  principle 
that  the  poet  sings  :  — 

"  How  can  ye  chant,  ye  little  birds, 
And  I  sae  weary,  fu'  o'  care  ?  " 

To  the  heart  struck  through  with  its  first  experiences  of 
real  suffering  all  nature  is  full  of  cruelty,  and  the  young  and 
light-hearted  are  a  large  part  of  nature. 


THE    GOOD-BY  273 

"  She  has  no  feeling,"  he  said  to  himself.  "  Well,  there 
is  one  reason  the  more  for  my  going.  She  won't  break  her 
heart  for  me ;  nobody  loves  me  but  mother,  and  it  's  for  her 
sake  I  must  go.  She  mustn't  work  herself  to  death  for  me." 

And  then  he  sat  down  in  the  window  to  write  a  note  to 
be  given  to  his  mother  after  he  had  sailed,  for  he  could  not 
trust  himself  to  tell  her  what  he  was  about  to  do.  He 
knew  that  she  would  try  to  persuade  him  to  stay,  and  he 
felt  faint-hearted  when  he  thought  of  her.  "  She  would 
sit  up  early  and  late,  and  work  for  me  to  the  last  gasp,"  he 
thought ;  "  but  father  was  right.  It  is  selfish  of  me  to  take 
it,"  and  so  he  sat  trying  to  fashion  his  parting  note  into  a 
tone  of  cheerfulness. 

"My  dear  mother,"  he  wrote,  "this  will  come  to  you 
when  I  have  set  off  on  a  four  years'  voyage  round  the 
world.  Father  has  convinced  me  that  it 's  time  for  me  to 
be  doing  something  for  myself  ;  and  I  could  n't  get  a  school 
to  keep  —  and,  after  all,  education  is  got  other  ways  than 
at  college.  It's  hard  to  go,  because  I  love  home,  and  hard 
because  you  will  miss  me  —  though  no  one  else  will.  But 
father  may  rely  upon  it,  I  will  not  be  a  burden  on  him 
another  day.  Sink  or  swim,  I  shall  never  come  back  till  I 
have  enough  to  do  for  myself  and  you  too.  So  good-by, 
dear  mother.  I  know  you  will  always  pray  for  me,  and 
wherever  I  am  I  shall  try  to  do  just  as  I  think  you  would 
want  me  to  do.  I  know  your  prayers  will  follow  me,  and 
I  shall  always  be  your  affectionate  son. 

"  P.  S.  The  boys  may  have  those  chestnuts  and  walnuts 
in  my  room  —  and  in  my  drawer  there  is  a  bit  of  ribbon 
with  a  locket  on  it  I  was  going  to  give  cousin  Diana.  Per 
haps  she  won't  care  for  it,  though  ;  but  if  she  does,  she  is 
welcome  to  it  —  it  may  put  her  in  mind  of  old  times." 

And  this  is  all  he  said,  with  bitterness  in  his  heart,  as  he 
leaned  on  the  window  and  looked  out  at  the  great  yellow 
moon  that  was  shining  so  bright  as  to  show  the  golden  hues 


274  DEACON  PITKIN'S  FARM 

of  the  overhanging  elm  boughs  and  the  scarlet  of  an  adjoin 
ing  maple. 

A  light  ripple  of  laughter  came  up  from  below,  and  a 
chestnut  thrown  up  struck  him  on  the  hand,  and  he  saw 
Diana  and  Bill  step  from  out  the  shadowy  porch. 

"  There  's  a  chestnut  for  you,  Mr.  Owl,"  she  called 
gayly,  "  if  you  will  stay  moping  up  there  !  Come,  now,  it 's 
a  splendid  evening  ;  won't  you  come  ?  " 

"  No,  thank  you.      I  sha'n't  be  missed,"  was  the  reply. 

"  That 's  true  enough  ;  the  loss  is  your  own.  Good-by, 
Mr.  Philosopher." 

"  Good-by,  Diana." 

Something  in  the  tone  struck  strangely  through  her  heart. 
It  was  the  voice  of  what  Diana  never  had  felt  yet  —  deep 
suffering  —  and  she  gave  a  little  shiver. 

"  What  an  awfully  solemn  voice  James  has  sometimes," 
she  said  ;  and  then  added,  with  a  laugh,  "  it  would  make 
his  fortune  as  a  Methodist  minister." 

The  sound  of '  the  light  laugh  and  little  snatches  and 
echoes  of  gay  talk  came  back  like  heartless  elves  to  mock 
Jim's  sorrow. 

"  So  much  for  her,"  he  said,  and  turned  to  go  and  look 
for  his  mother. 


CHAPTER  V 

MOTHER    AND    SON 

He  knew  where  he  should  find  her.  There  was  a  little, 
low  work-room  adjoining  the  kitchen  that  was  his  mother's 
sanctum.  There  stood  her  work-basket  —  there  were  al 
ways  piles  and  piles  of  work,  begun  or  finished  ;  and  there 
also  her  few  books  at  hand,  to  be  glanced  into  in  rare  snatches 
of  leisure  in  her  busy  life.  The  old-time  New  England 
house  mother  was  not  a  mere  unreflective  drudge  of  domestic 


MOTHER  AND   SON  275 

toil.  She  was  a  reader  and  a  thinker,  keenly  appreciative 
in  intellectual  regions.  The  literature  of  that  day  in  New 
England  was  sparse ;  but,  whatever  there  was,  whether  in 
this  country  or  in  England,  that  was  noteworthy,  was  mat 
ter  of  keen  interest,  and  Mrs.  Pitkin's  small  library  was 
very  dear  to  her.  No  nun  in  a  convent  under  vows  of  ab 
stinence  ever  practiced  more  rigorous  self-denial  than  she 
did  in  the  restraints  and  government  of  intellectual  tastes 
and  desires.  Her  son  was  dear  to  her  as  the  fulfillment 
and  expression  of  her  unsatisfied  craving  for  knowledge,  the 
possessor  of  those  fair  fields  of  thought  which  duty  forbade 
her  to  explore. 

James  stood  and  looked  in  at  the  window,  and  saw  her 
sorting  and  arranging  the  family  mending,  busy  over  piles 
of  stockings  and  shirts,  while  on  the  table  beside  her  lay 
her  open  Bible,  and  she  was  singing  to  herself,  in  a  low, 
sweet  undertone,  one  of  the  favorite  minor-keyed  melodies 
of  those  days  :  — 

"  O  God,  our  help  in  ages  past, 
Our  hope  for  years  to  come, 
Our  shelter  from  the  stormv  blast 
And  our  eternal  home!  " 

An  indescribable  feeling,  blended  of  pity  and  reverence, 
swelled  in  his  heart  as  he  looked  at  her  and  marked  the 
whitening  hair,  the  thin  worn  little  hands  so  busy  with  their 
love  work,  and  thought  of  all  the  bearing  and  forbearing, 
the  waiting,  the  watching,  the  long-suffering  that  had  made 
up  her  life  for  so  many  years.  The  very  look  of  exquisite 
calm  and  resolved  strength  in  her  patient  eyes  and  in  the 
gentle  lines  of  her  face  had  something  that  seemed  to  him 
sad  and  awful  —  as  the  purely  spiritual  always  looks  to  the 
more  animal  nature.  With  his  blood  bounding  and  tingling 
in  his  veins,  his  strong  arms  pulsating  with  life,  and  his 
heart  full  of  a  man's  vigor  and  resolve,  his  mother's  life 
seemed  to  him  to  be  one  of  weariness  and  drudgery,  of 


276  DEACON   PITKIN'S   FARM 

constant,  unceasing  self-abnegation.  Calm  he  knew  she 
was,  always  sustained,  never  faltering ;  but  her  victory  was 
one  which,  like  the  spiritual  sweetness  in  the  face  of  the 
dying,  had  something  of  sadness  for  the  living  heart.  He 
opened  the  door  and  came  in,  sat  down  by  her  on  the  floor, 
and  laid  his  head  in  her  lap. 

"  Mother,  you  never  rest ;   you  never  stop  working." 
" Oh,  no  !  "  she  said  gayly  ;  "I  'm  just  going  to  stop  now. 
I  had  only  a  few  last  things  I  wanted  to  get  done." 

"  Mother,  I  can't  bear  to  think  of  you ;  your  life  is  too 
hard.  We  all  have  our  amusements,  our  rests,  our  changes ; 
your  work  is  never  done  j  you  are  worn  out,  and  get  no 
time  to  read,  no  time  for  anything  but  drudgery." 

"  Don't  say  drudgery,  my  boy  —  work  done  for  those  we 
love  never  is  drudgery.  I'm  so  happy  to  have  you  all 
around  me  I  never  feel  it." 

"  But,  mother,  you  are  not  strong,  and  I  don't  see  how 
you  can  hold  out  to  do  all  you  do." 

"  Well,"  she  said  simply,  "  when  my  strength  is  all  gone 
I  ask  God  for  more,  and  he  always  gives  it.  <  They  that 
wait  on  the  Lord  shall  renew  their  strength.' "  And  her 
hand  involuntarily  fell  on  the  open  Bible. 

"  Yes,  I  know  it,"  he  said,  following  her  hand  with  his 
eyes;  while,  " Mother,"  he  said,  "I  want  you  to  give  me 
your  Bible  and  take  mine.  I  think  yours  would  do  me 
more  good." 

There  was  a  little  bright  flush  and  a  pleased  smile  on 
his  mother's  face  — 

"  Certainly,  my  boy,  I  will." 

"  I  see  you  have  marked  your  favorite  places,"  he  added. 
"It  will  seem  like  hearing  you  speak  to  read  them." 

"  With  all  my  heart,"  she  added,  taking  up  the  Bible 
and  kissing  his  forehead  as  she  put  it  into  his  hands. 

There  was  a  struggle  in  his  heart  how  to  say  farewell 
without  saying  it  —  without  letting  her  know  that  he  was 


MOTHER   AND   SON  277 

going  to  leave  her.  He  clasped  her  in  his  arms  and  kissed 
her  again  and  again. 

"Mother,"  he  said,  "if  I  ever  get  into  heaven  it  will  be 
through  you." 

"  Don't  say  that,  my  son  —  it  must  be  through  a  better 
Friend  than  I  am  —  who  loves  you  more  than  I  do.  I 
have  not  died  for  you  —  He  did." 

"  Oh,  that  I  knew  where  I  might  find  Him,  then.  You 
I  can  see  —  Him  I  cannot." 

His  mother  looked  at  him  with  a  face  full  of  radiance, 
pity,  and  hope. 

"  I  feel  sure  you  will"  she  said.  "  You  are  consecrated,'7 
she  added,  in  a  low  voice,  laying  her  hand  on  his  head. 

"Amen,"  said  James,  in  a  reverential  tone.  He  felt  that 
that  she  was  at  that  moment  —  as  she  often  was  —  silently 
speaking  to  One  invisible  of  and  for  him,  and  the  sense  of  it 
stole  over  him  like  a  benediction.  There  was  a  pause  of 
tender  silence  for  many  minutes. 

"  Well,  I  must  not  keep  you  up  any  longer,  mother  dear 
—  it  's  time  you  were  resting.  Good-night."  And  with  a 
long  embrace  and  kiss  they  separated.  He  had  yet  fifteen 
miles  to  walk  to  reach  the  midnight  stage  that  was  to  con 
vey  him  to  Salem. 

As  he  was  starting  from  the  house  with  his  bundle  in  his 
hand,  the  sound  of  a  gay  laugh  came  through  the  distant 
shrubbery.  It  was  Diana  and  Bill  returning  from  the  husk 
ing.  Hastily  he  concealed  himself  behind  a  clump  of  old 
lilac  bushes  till  they  emerged  into  the  moonlight  and  passed 
into  the  house.  Diana  was  in  one  of  those  paroxysms  of 
young  girl  frolic  which  are  the  effervescence  of  young, 
healthy  blood,  as  natural  as  the  gyrations  of  a  bobolink  on  a 
clover-head.  James  was  thinking  of  dark  nights  and  stormy 
seas,  years  of  exile,  mother's  sorrows,  home  perhaps  never  to 
be  seen  more,  and  the  laugh  jarred  on  him  like  a  terrible  dis 
cord.  He  watched  her  into  the  house,  turned,  and  was  gone. 


278  DEACON  PITKIN'S  FARM 

CHAPTER  VI 

GONE    TO    SEA 

A  little  way  on  in  his  moonlight  walk  James's  ears  were 
saluted  by  the  sound  of  some  one  whistling  and  crackling 
through  the  bushes,  and  soon  Biah  Carter  emerged  into 
the  moonlight,  having  been  out  to  the  same  husking  where 
Diana  and  Bill  had  been  enjoying  themselves.  The  sight 
of  him  resolved  a  doubt  which  had  been  agitating  James's 
mind.  The  note  to  his  mother  which  was  to  explain  his 
absence  and  the  reasons  for  it  was  still  in  his  coat-pocket, 
and  he  had  designed  sending  it  back  by  some  messenger  at 
the  tavern  where  he  took  the  midnight  stage  ;  but  here  was 
a  more  trusty  party.  It  involved,  to  be  sure,  the  necessity 
of  taking  Biah  into  his  confidence.  James  was  well  aware 
that  to  tell  that  acute  individual  the  least  particle  of  a  story 
was  like  starting  a  gimlet  in  a  pine  board  —  there  was  no 
stop  till  it  had  gone  through.  So  he  told  him  in  brief  that 
a  good  berth  had  been  offered  to  him  on  the  Eastern  Star, 
and  he  meant  to  take  it  to  relieve  his  father  of  the  pressure 
of  his  education. 

"  Wai  naow  —  you  don't  say  so,"  was  Biah's  commen 
tary.  "  Wai,  yis,  't  is  hard  sleddin'  for  the  deacon  —  drefful 
hard  sleddin'.  Wai,  naow,  s'pose  you  're  disapp'inted  — 
shouldn't  wonder — jes'  so.  Eddication 's  a  good  thing, 
but  't  aint  the  only  thing  naow  ;  folks  1'arns  a  sight  rubbin' 
round  the  world  —  and  then  they  make  money.  Jes'  see, 
there 's  Cap'n  Stebbins  and  Cap'n  Andrews  and  Cap'n 
Merry  weather  —  all  livin'  on  good  farms,  with  good,  nice 
houses,  all  got  goin'  to  sea.  Expect  Mis'  Pitkin  '11  take  it 
sort  o'  hard,  she 's  so  sot  on  you ;  but  she  's  allers  sayin' 
things  is  for  the  best,  and  maybe  she  '11  come  to  think  so 
'bout  this  —  folks  gen' ally  does  when  they  can't  help  them- 


GONE   TO   SEA  279 

selves.  Wai,  yis,  naow  —  goin'  to  walk  to  the  cross-road 
tavern  ?  Better  not.  Jest  wait  a  minit  and  I  '11  hitch  up 
and  take  ye  over." 

"Thank  you,  Biah,  but  I  can't  stop,  and  I'd  rather 
walk,  so  I  won't  trouble  you." 

"  Wai,  look  here  —  don't  ye  want  a  sort  o'  nest-egg  ? 
1 7ve  got  fifty  silver  dollars  laid  up  :  you  take  it  on  ven 
ture  and  give  me  half  what  it  brings." 

"  Thank  you,  Biah.  If  you  '11  trust  me  with  it  I  '11  hope 
to  do  something  for  us  both." 

Biah  went  into  the  house,  and  after  some  fumbling 
brought  out  a  canvas  bag,  which  he  put  into  James's 
hand. 

"  Wanted  to  go  to  sea  confoundedly  myself,  but  there  's 
Mariar  Jane — she  won't  hear  on't,  and  turns  on  the  water 
works  if  I  peep  a  single  word.  Farmin'  's  drefful  slow,,  but 
when  a  feller 's  got  a  gal  he  's  got  a  cap'n ;  he  has  to  mind 
orders.  So  you  jest  trade  and  we  '11  go  sheers.  I  think 
consid'able  of  you,  and  I  expect  you  '11  make  it  go  as  fur  as 
anybody." 

"  I  '11  try  my  best,  you  may  believe,  Biah,"  said  James, 
shaking  the  hard  hand  heartily,  as  he  turned  on  his  way 
towards  the  cross-roads  tavern. 

The  whole  village  of  Maplewood  on  Thanksgiving  Day 
morning  was  possessed  of  the  fact  that  James  Pitkin  had 
gone  off  to  sea  in  the  Eastern  Star,  for  Biah  had  felt  all 
the  sense  of  importance  which  the  possession  of  a  startling 
piece  of  intelligence  gives  to  one,  and  took  occasion  to  call 
at  the  tavern  and  store  on  his  way  up  and  make  the  most 
of  his  information,  so  that  by  the  time  the  bell  rang  for 
service  the  news  might  be  said  to  be  everywhere.  The 
minister's  general  custom  on  Thanksgiving  Day  was  to  get 
off  a  political  sermon  reviewing  the  state  of  New  England, 
the  United  States  of  America,  and  Europe,  Asia,  and  Africa ; 
but  it  may  be  doubted  if  all  the  affairs  of  all  these  conti- 


280  DEACON  PITKIN'S  FARM 

nents  produced  as  much  sensation  among  the  girls  in  the 
singers'  seat  that  day  as  did  the  news  that  James  Pitkin 
had  gone  to  sea  on  a  four  years'  voyage.  Curious  eyes 
were  cast  on  Diana  Pitkin,  and  many  were  the  whispers  and 
speculations  as  to  the  part  she  might  have  had  in  the  move ; 
and  certainly  she  looked  paler  and  graver  than  usual,  and 
some  thought  they  could  detect  traces  of  tears  on  her  cheeks. 
Some  noticed  in  the  tones  of  her  voice  that  day,  as  they 
rose  in  the  soprano,  a  tremor  and  pathos  never  remarked 
before  —  the  unconscious  utterance,  of  a  new  sense  of  sor 
row,  awakened  in  a  soul  that  up  to  this  time  had  never 
known  a  grief. 

For  the  letter  had  fallen  on  the  heads  of  the  Pitkin  house 
hold  like  a  thunderbolt.  Biah  came  in  to  breakfast  and 
gave  it  to  Mrs.  Pitkin,  saying  that  James  had  handed  him 
that  last  night,  on  his  way  over  to  take  the  midnight  stage 
to  Salem,  where  he  was  going  to  sail  on  the  Eastern  Star 
to-day  —  no  doubt  he 's  off  to  sea  by  this  time.  A  confused 
sound  of  exclamations  went  up  around  the  table,  while  Mrs. 
Pitkin,  pale  and  calm,  read  the  letter  and  then  passed  it  to 
her  husband  without  a  word.  The  bright,  fixed  color  in 
Diana's  face  had  meanwhile  been  slowly  ebbing  away,  till, 
with  cheeks  and  lips  pale  as  ashes,  she  hastily  rose  and  left 
the  table  and  went  to  her  room.  A  strange,  new,  terrible 
pain  —  a  sensation  like  being  choked  or  smothered  —  a  rush 
of  mixed  emotions  —  a  fearful  sense  of  some  inexorable, 
unalterable  crisis  having  come  of  her  girlish  folly  —  over 
whelmed  her.  Again  she  remembered  the  deep  tones  of 
his  good-by,  and  how  she  had  only  mocked  at  his  emotion. 
She  sat  down  and  leaned  her  head  on  her  hands  in  a  tear 
less,  confused  sorrow. 

Deacon  Pitkin  was  at  first  more  shocked  and  overwhelmed 
than  his  wife.  His  yesterday's  talk  with  James  had  no 
such  serious  purpose.  It  had  been  only  the  escape-valve 
for  his  hypochondriac  forebodings  of  the  future,  and  nothing 


GONE   TO   SEA  281 

was  farther  from  his  thoughts  than  having  it  bear  fruit  in 
any  such  decisive  movement  on  the  part  of  his  son.  In 
fact,  he  was  secretly  proud  of  his  talents  and  his  scholar 
ship,  and  had  set  his  heart  on  his  going  through  college,  and 
had  no  more  serious  purpose  in  what  he  said  the  day  be 
fore  than  the  general  one  of  making  his  son  feel  the  difficul 
ties  and  straits  he  was  put  to  for  him.  Young  men  were 
tempted  at  college  to  be  too  expensive,  he  thought,  and  to 
forget  what  it  cost  their  parents  at  home.  In  short,  the 
whole  thing  had  been  merely  the  passing  off  of  a  paroxysm 
of  hypochondria,  and  he  had  already  begun  to  be  satisfied 
that  he  should  raise  his  interest  money  that  year  without 
material  difficulty.  The  letter  showed  him  too  keenly  the 
depth  of  the  suffering  he  had  inflicted  on  his  son,  and  when 
he  had  read  it  he  cast  a  sort  of  helpless,  questioning  look 
on  his  wife,  and  said,  after  an  interval  of  silence :  — 

"Well,  mother!" 

There  was  something  quite  pathetic  in  the  appealing  look 
and  voice. 

"  Well,  father,"  she  answered  in  subdued  tones  ;  "  all  we 
can  do  now  is  to  leave  it." 

Leave  it ! 

Those  were  words  often  in  that  woman's  mouth,  and  they 
expressed  that  habit  of  her  life  which  made  her  victorious 
over  all  troubles,  that  habit  of  trust  in  the  Infinite  Will  that 
actually  could  and  did  leave  every  accomplished  event  in 
His  hand,  without  murmur  and  without  conflict.  If  there  was 
any  one  thing  in  her  uniformly  self -denied  life  that  had  been 
a  personal  ambition  and  a  personal  desire,  it  had  been  that 
her  son  should  have  a  college  education.  It  was  the  centre 
of  her  earthly  wishes,  hopes,  and  efforts.  That  wish  had 
been  cut  off  in  a  moment,  that  hope  had  sunk  under  her  feet, 
and  now  only  remained  to  her  the  task  of  comforting  the 
undisciplined  soul  whose  unguided  utterances  had  wrought 
the  mischief.  It  was  not  the  first  time  that,  wounded  by 


282  DEACON  PITKIN'S  FARM 

a  loving  hand  in  this  dark  struggle  of  life,  she  had  sup 
pressed  the  pain  of  her  own  hurt  that  he  that  had  wounded 
her  might  the  better  forgive  himself. 

"  Dear  father,"  she  said  to  him,  when  over  and  over  he 
blamed  himself  for  his  yesterday's  harsh  words  to  his  son, 
"  don't  worry  about  it  now ;  you  didn't  mean  it.  James 
is  a  good  boy,  and  he  '11  see  it  right  at  last ;  and  he  is  in 
God's  hands,  and  we  must  leave  him  there.  He  overrules 
all." 

When  Mrs.  Pitkin  turned  from  her  husband  she  sought 
Diana  in  her  room. 

"  Oh,  cousin  !  cousin  !  "  said  the  girl,  throwing  herself 
into  her  arms.  "  Is  this  true  ?  Is  James  gone  !  Can't 
we  do  anything  ?  Can't  we  get  him  back  ?  I  've  been 
thinking  it  over.  Oh,  if  the  ship  would  n't  sail !  and  I  'd 
go  to  Salem  and  beg  him  to  come  back,  on  my  knees.  Oh, 
if  I  had  only  known  yesterday  !  Oh,  cousin,  cousin !  he 
wanted  to  talk  with  me,  and  I  would  n't  hear  him  !  —  oh, 
if  I  only  had,  I  could  have  persuaded  him  out  of  it !  Oh, 
why  did  n't  I  know  ?  " 

"  There,  there,  dear  child  !  We  must  accept  it  just  as  it 
is,  now  that  it  is  done.  Don't  feel  so.  We  must  try  to 
look  at  the  good." 

"  Oh,  show  me  that  letter,"  said  Diana;  and  Mrs.  Pitkin, 
hoping  to  tranquillize  her,  gave  her  James's  note.  "He 
thinks  I  don't  care  for  him,"  she  said,  reading  it  hastily. 
"  Well,  I  don't  wonder  !  But  I  do  care  !  I  love  him  bet 
ter  than  anybody  or  anything  under  the  sun,  and  I  never 
will  forget  him  ;  he  's  a  brave,  noble,  good  man,  and  I  shall 
love  him  as  long  as  I  live  —  I  don't  care  who  knows  it ! 
Give  me  that  locket,  cousin,  and  write  to  him  that  I  shall 
wear  it  to  my  grave." 

"  Dear  child,  there  is  no  writing  to  him." 

"  Oh,  dear  !  that 's  the  worst.  Oh,  that  horrid,  horrid 
sea!  It's  like  death  —  you  don't  know  where  they  are, 


GONE   TO   SEA  283 

and  you  can't  hear  from  them  —  and  a  four  years'  voyage  ! 
Oh,  dear  !  oh,  dear  !  " 

"  Don't,  dear  child,  don't ;  you  distress  me,"  said  Mrs. 
Pitkin. 

"  Yes,  that 's  just  like  me,"  said  Diana,  wiping  her  eyes. 
"  Here  I  am  thinking  only  of  myself,  and  you  that  have 
had  your  heart  broken  are  trying  to  comfort  me,  and  trying 
to  comfort  Cousin  Silas.  We  have  both  of  us  scolded  and 
flouted  him  away,  and  now  you,  who  suffer  the  most  of 
either  of  us,  spend  your  breath  to  comfort  us.  It 's  just 
like  you.  But,  cousin,  I  '11  try  to  be  good  and  comfort  you. 
I  '11  try  to  be  a  daughter  to  you.  You  need  somebody  to 
think  of  you,  for  you  never  think  of  yourself.  Let 's  go  in 
his  room,"  she  said,  and  taking  the  mother  by  the  hand 
they  crossed  to  the  empty  room.  There  was  his  writing- 
table,  there  his  forsaken  books,  his  papers,  —  some  of  his 
clothes  hanging  in  his  closet.  Mrs.  Pitkin,  opening  a 
drawer,  took  out  a  locket  hung  upon  a  bit  of  blue  ribbon, 
where  there  were  two  locks  of  hair,  one  of  which  Diana 
recognized  as  her  own,  and  one  of  James's.  She  hastily 
hung  it  about  her  neck  and  concealed  it  in  her  bosom,  lay 
ing  her  hand  hard  upon  it,  as  if  she  would  still  the  beatings 
of  her  heart. 

"  It  seems  like  a  death,"  she  said.  "  Don't  you  think 
the  ocean  is  like  death  —  wide,  dark,  stormy,  unknown  ? 
We  cannot  speak  to  or  hear  from  them  that  are  on  it." 

"  But  people  can  and  do  come  back  from  the  sea,"  said 
the  mother,  soothingly.  "I  trust,  in  God's  own  time,  we 
shall  see  James  back." 

"  But  what  if  we  never  should  ?  Oh,  cousin  !  I  can't 
help  thinking  of  that.  There  was  Michael  Davis,  —  you 
know  —  the  ship  was  never  heard  from." 

"  Well  " — said  the  mother,  after  a  moment's  pause  and  a 
chokirig  down  of  some  rising  emotion,  and  turning  to  a  table 
on  which  lay  a  Bible,  she  opened  and  read  :  "  If  I  take  the 


284  DEACON  PITKIN'S  FARM 

wings  of  the  morning  and  dwell  in  the  uttermost  parts  of 
the  sea,  even  there  shall  Thy  hand  lead  me,  and  Thy  right 
hand  shall  hold  me." 

The  THEE  in  this  psalm  was  not  to  her  a  name,  a  shadow, 
a  cipher,  to  designate  the  unknowable,  it  stood  for  the  in 
separable  Heart-friend  —  the  Father  seeing  in  secret,  on 
whose  bosom  all  her  tears  of  sorrow  had  been  shed,  the 
Comforter  and  Guide  forever  dwelling  in  her  soul,  and  giv 
ing  peace  where  the  world  gave  only  trouble.  Diana  be 
held  her  face  as  it  had  been  the  face  of  an  angel.  She 
kissed  her,  and  turned  away  in  silence. 

CHAPTER  VII 

THANKSGIVING    AGAIN 

Seven  years  had  passed,  and  once  more  the  Thanksgiving- 
tide  was  in  Mapleton.  This  year  it  had  come  cold  and 
frosty.  Chill  driving  autumn  storms  had  stripped  the 
painted  glories  from  the  trees,  and  remorseless  frosts  had 
chased  the  hardy  ranks  of  the  asters  and  goldenrods  back 
and  back  till  scarce  a  blossom  could  be  found  in  the  deepest 
and  most  sequestered  spots.  The  great  elm  over  the  Pit- 
kin  farmhouse  had  been  stripped  of  its  golden  glory,  and 
now  rose  against  the  yellow  evening  sky,  with  its  infinite 
delicacies  of  network  and  tracery,  in  their  way  quite  as 
beautiful  as  the  full  pomp  of  summer  foliage.  The  air 
without  was  keen  and  frosty,  and  the  knotted  twigs  of  the 
branches  knocked  against  the  roof  and  rattled  and  ticked 
against  the  upper  window-panes  as  the  chill  evening  wind 
swept  through  them. 

Seven  long  years  had  passed  since  James  sailed.  Years 
of  watching,  of  waiting,  of  cheerful  patience,  at  first,  and  at 
last  of  resigned  sorrow.  Once  they  heard  from  James,  at 
the  first  port  where  the  ship  stopped.  It  was  a  letter  dear 


THANKSGIVING  AGAIN  285 

to  his  mother's  heart,  manly,  resigned,  and  Christian ;  ex 
pressing  full  purpose  to  work  with  God  in  whatever  calling 
he  should  labor,  and  cheerful  hopes  of  the  future.  Then 
came  a  long,  long  silence,  and  then  tidings  that  the  East 
ern  Star  had  been  wrecked  on  a  reef  in  the  Indian  Ocean ! 
The  mother  had  given  back  her  treasure  into  the  same  be 
loved  hands  whence  she  first  received  him.  "  I  gave  him 
to  God,  and  God  took  him/7  she  said.  "  I  shall  have  him 
again  in  God's  time."  This  was  how  she  settled  the 
whole  matter  with  herself.  Diana  had  mourned  with  all 
the  vehement  intensity  of  her  being,  but  out  of  the  deep 
baptism  of  sorrow  she  had  emerged  with  a  new  and  nobler 
nature.  The  vain,  trifling,  laughing  Undine  had  received 
a  soul  and  was  a  true  woman.  She  devoted  herself  to 
James's  mother  with  an  utter  self-sacrificing  devotion,  re 
solved  as  far  as  in  her  lay  to  be  both  son  and  daughter  to 
her.  She  read  and  studied,  and  fitted  herself  as  a  teacher  in 
a  neighboring  academy,  and  persisted  in  claiming  the  right 
of  a  daughter  to  place  all  the  amount  of  her  earnings  in  the 
family  purse. 

And  this  year  there  was  special  need.  With  all  his  care, 
with  all  his  hard  work  and  that  of  his  family,  Deacon  Si 
las  never  had  been  able  to  raise  money  to  annihilate  the 
debt  upon  the  farm.  There  seemed  to  be  a  perfect  fatality 
about  it.  Let  them  all  make  what  exertions  they  might, 
just  as  they  were  hoping  for  a  sum  that  should  exceed  the 
interest  and  begin  the  work  of  settling  the  principal  would 
come  some  loss  that  would  throw  them  all  back.  One  year 
their  barn  was  burned  just  as  they  had  housed  their  hay. 
On  another  a  valuable  horse  died,  and  then  there  were  fits 
of  sickness  among  the  children,  and  poor  crops  in  the  field, 
and  low  prices  in  the  market ;  in  short,  as  Biah  remarked, 
"  The  deacon's  luck  did  seem  to  be  sort  o'  streaky,  for  do 
what  Vou  might  there  's  always  suthin'  to  put  him  back." 
As  the  younger  boys  grew  up  the  deacon  had  ceased  to  hire 


286  DEACON  PITKIN'S  FARM 

help,  and  Biah  had  transferred  his  services  to  Squire  Jones, 
a  rich  landholder  in  the  neighborhood,  who  wanted  some 
one  to  overlook  his  place.  The  increased  wages  had  en 
abled  him  to  give  a  home  to  Maria  Jane  and  a  start  in  life 
to  two  or  three  sturdy  little  American  citizens  who  played 
around  his  house  door.  Nevertheless,  Biah  never  lost 
sight  of  the  "  deacon's  folks  "  in  his  multifarious  cares,  and 
never  missed  an  opportunity  either  of  doing  them  a  good 
turn  or  of  picking  up  any  stray  item  of  domestic  news  as  to 
how  matters  were  going  on  in  that  interior.  He  had  pri 
vately  broached  the  theory  to  Miss  Briskett,  that  "  arter  all 
it  was  James  that  Diany  (he  always  pronounced  all  names 
as  if  they  ended  in  y)  was  sot  on,  and  that  she  took  it  so 
hard,  his  goin'  off,  that  it  did  beat  all !  Seemed  to  make 
another  gal  of  her  ;  he  should  n't  wonder  if  she  'd  come  out 
and  jine  the  church."  And  Diana  not  long  after  uncon 
sciously  fulfilled  Biah's  predictions. 

Of  late  Biah's  good  offices  had  been  in  special  requisi 
tion,  as  the  deacon  had  been  for  nearly  a  month  on  a  sick 
bed  with  one  of  those  interminable  attacks  of  typhus  fever 
which  used  to  prevail  in  old  times,  when  the  doctor  did 
everything  he  could  to  make  it  certain  that  a  man  once 
brought  down  with  sickness  never  should  rise  again.  But 
Silas  Pitkin  had  a  constitution  derived  through  an  indefinite 
distance  from  a  temperate,  hard-working,  godly  ancestry, 
and  so  withstood  both  death  and  the  doctor,  and  was  alive 
and  in  a  convalescent  state,  which  gave  hope  of  his  being 
able  to  carve  the  turkey  at  his  Thanksgiving  dinner. 

The  evening  sunlight  was  just  fading  out  of  the  little 
"  keeping-room,"  adjoining  the  bedroom,  where  the  conva 
lescent  now  was  able  to  sit  up  most  of  the  day.  A  cot  bed 
had  been  placed  there,  designed  for  him  to  lie  down  upon 
in  intervals  of  fatigue.  At  present,  however,  he  was  sitting 
in  his  armchair,  complacently  watching  the  blaze  of  the 
hickory  fire,  or  following  placidly  the  motions  of  his  wife's 


THANKSGIVING  AGAIN  287 

knitting-needles.  There  was  an  air  of  calmness  and  repose 
on  his  thin,  worn  features  that  never  was  there  in  days  of 
old :  the  haggard,  anxious  lines  had  been  smoothed  away, 
and  that  spiritual  expression  which  sickness  and  sorrow 
sometimes  develops  on  the  human  face  reigned  in  its  place. 
It  was  the  "  clear  shining  after  rain." 

"  Wife,"  he  said,  "  read  me  something  I  can't  quite  re 
member  out  of  the  Bible.  It  's  in  the  eighth  of  Deuteron 
omy,  the  second  verse." 

Mrs.  Pitkin  opened  the  big  family  Bible  on  the  stand, 
and  read,  "  And  thou  shalt  remember  all  the  way  in  which 
the  Lord  thy  God  hath  led  thee  these  forty  years  in  the 
wilderness,  to  humble  thee  and  to  prove  thee  and  to  know 
what  is  in  thy  heart,  and  whether  thou  wouldst  keep  his 
commandments  or  no.  And  he  humbled  thee,  and  suffered 
thee  to  hunger,  and  fed  thee  with  manna,  which  thou  knew- 
est  not,  neither  did  thy  fathers  know,  that  he  might  make 
thee  know  that  man  doth  not  live  by  bread  alone,  but  by 
every  word  that  proceedeth  out  of  the  mouth  of  the  Lord 
doth  man  live." 

"There,  that's  it,"  interrupted  the  deacon.  " That's 
what  I  've  been  thinking  of  as  I  've  lain  here  sick  and 
helpless.  I  've  fought  hard  to  keep  things  straight,  and  clear 
the  farm,  but  it 's  pleased  the  Lord  to  bring  me  low.  I  've 
had  to  lie  still  and  leave  all  in  his  hands." 

"  And  where  better  could  you  leave  all  ?  "  said  his  wife, 
with  a  radiant  smile. 

"Well,  just  so.  I've  been  saying,  'Here  I  am,  Lord; 
do  with  me  as  seemeth  to  thee  good,'  and  I  feel  a  great  quiet 
now.  I  think  it 's  doubtful  if  we  make  up  the  interest  this 
year.  I  don't  know  what  Bill  may  get  for  the  hay :  but 
I  don't  see  much  prospect  of  raisin'  on't ;  and  yet  I  don't 
worry.  Even  if  it 's  the  Lord's  will  to  have  the  place  sold 
up  ai;d  we  be  turned  out  in  our  old  age,  I  don't  seem  to 
worry  about  it.  His  will  be  done." 


288  DEACON  PITKIN'S  FAKM 

There  was  a  sound  of  rattling  wheels  at  this  moment,  and 
anon  there  came  a  brush  and  nutter  of  garments,  and  Diana 
rushed  in,  all  breezy  with  the  freshness  of  outdoor  air,  and 
caught  Mrs.  Pitkin  in  her  arms  and  kissed  her  first  and  then 
the  deacon  with  effusion. 

"Here  I  come  for  Thanksgiving,"  she  said,  in  a  rich,  clear 
tone ;  "  and  here,"  she  added,  drawing  a  roll  of  bills  from 
her  bosom,  and  putting  it  into  the  deacon's  hand,  "  here  's 
the  interest  money  for  this  year.  I  got  it  all  myself,  because 
I  wanted  to  show  you  I  could  be  good  for  something." 

"Thank  you,  dear  daughter,"  said  Mrs.  Pitkin.  " I  felt 
sure  some  way  would  be  found,  and  now  I  see  what."  She 
added,  kissing  Diana  and  patting  her  rosy  cheek,  "  a  very 
pleasant,  pretty  way  it  is,  too." 

"  I  was  afraid  that  Cousin  Silas  would  worry  and  put 
himself  back  again  about  the  interest  money,"  said  Diana. 

"Well,  daughter,"  said  the  Deacon,  "it's  a  pity  we 
should  go  through  all  we  do  in  this  world  and  not  learn 
anything  by  it.  I  hope  the  Lord  has  taught  me  not  to 
worry,  but  just  do  my  best  and  leave  myself  and  everything 
else  in  his  hands.  We  can't  help  ourselves  —  we  can't  make 
one  hair  white  or  black.  Why  should  we  wear  our  lives 
out  fretting  ?  If  I  'd  'a'  known  that  years  ago  it  would  V 
been  better  for  us  all." 

"  Never  mind,  father,  you  know  it  now,"  said  his  wife, 
with  a  face  serene  as  a  star.  In  this  last  gift  of  quietude 
of  soul  to  her  husband  she  recognized  the  answer  to  her 
prayers  of  years. 

"Well,  now,"  said  Diana,  running  to  the  window,  "I 
should  like  to  know  what  Biah  Carter  is  coming  here  about." 

"  Oh,  Biah 's  been  very  kind  to  us  in  this  sickness,"  said 
Mrs.  Pitkin,  as  Biah's  feet  resounded  on  the  scraper. 

" Good-evenin',  Deacon,"  said  Biah,  entering;  "Good- 
evenin',  Mis'  Pitkin.  Sarvant,  ma'am,"  to  Diana, —  "  how 
ye  all  gettin'  on  ?  " 


THANKSGIVING  AGAIN  289 

"Nicely,  Biah  —  well  as  can  be,"  said  Mrs.  Pitkin. 

"  Wai,  you  see  I  was  up  to  the  store  with  some  o'  Squire 
Jones's  bell-flowers.  Sim  Coan  he  said  he  wanted  some  to 
sell,  and  so  I  took  up  a  couple  o'  barrels,  and  I  see  the  darnd- 
est  big  letter  there  for  the  Deacon.  Miss  Briskett  she  was 
in,  lookin'  at  it,  and  so  was  Deacon  Simson's  wife  ;  she  come 
in  arter  some  cinnamon  sticks.  Wai,  and  they  all  looked 
at  it  and  talked  it  over,  and  could  n't  none  o'  'em  for  their 
lives  think  what  it 's  all  about,  it  was  sich  an  almighty  thick 
letter,"  said  Biah,  drawing  out  a  long,  legal-looking  envel 
ope  and  putting  it  in  the  Deacon's  hands. 

"  I  hope  there  is  n't  bad  news  in  it,"  said  Silas  Pitkin, 
the  color  flushing  apprehensively  in  his  pale  cheeks  as  he 
felt  for  his  spectacles. 

There  was  an  agitated,  silent  pause  while  he  broke  the 
seals  and  took  out  two  documents.  One  was  the  mortgage 
on  his  farm  and  the  other  a  receipt  in  full  for  the  money 
owed  on  it.  The  Deacon  turned  the  papers  to  and  fro, 
gazed  on  them  with  a  dazed,  uncertain  air,  and  then  said  :  — 

"  Why,  mother,  do  look  !  Is  this  so  ?  Do  I  read  it 
right  ?  " 

"  Certainly,  you  do,"  said  Diana,  reading  over  his  shoul 
der.  "  Somebody's  paid  that  debt,  cousin  !  " 

" Thank  God  !  "  said  Mrs.  Pitkin  softly  ;  "He  has  done 
it." 

"  Wai,  I  swow  !  "  said  Biah,  after  having  turned  the 
paper  in  his  hands,  "  if  this  'ere  don't  beat  all !  There  's 
old  Squire  Norcross's  name  on't.  It 's  the  receipt,  full  and 
square.  What 's  come  over  the  old  crittur  ?  He  must  'a' 
got  religion  in  his  old  age  ;  but  if  grace  made  him  do  that, 
grace  has  done  a  tough  job,  that 's  all ;  but  it  ?s  done,  any 
how,  and  that 's  all  you  need  to  care  about.  Wai,  wal,  I 
must  git  along  hum  —  Mariar  Jane  '11  be  wonderin'  where 
I  be.  .  Good  -  night,  all  on  ye  ! "  and  Biah's  retreating 
wagon  wheels  were  off  in  the  distance,  rattling  furiously, 


290  DEACON  PITKIN' s  FARM 

for,  notwithstanding  Maria  Jane's  wondering,  Biah  was  re 
solved  not  to  let  an  hour  slip  by  without  declaring  the 
wonderful  tidings  at  the  store.  The  Pitkin  family  were 
seated  at  supper  in  the  big  kitchen,  all  jubilant  over  the 
recent  news.  The  father,  radiant  with  the  pleasantest  ex 
citement,  had  for  the  first  time  come  out  to  take  his  place  at 
the  family  board.  In  the  seven  years  since  the  beginning 
of  our  story  the  Pitkin  boys  had  been  growing  apace,  and 
now  surrounded  the  table,  quite  an  army  of  rosy-cheeked, 
jolly  young  fellows,  who  to-night  were  in  a  perfect  tumult 
of  animal  gayety.  Diana  twinkled  and  dimpled  and  flung 
her  sparkles  round  among  them,  and  there  was  unbounded 
jollity. 

"  Who  's  that  looking  in  at  the  window  ?  "  called  out 
Sam,  aged  ten,  who  sat  opposite  the  house  door.  At  that 
moment  the  door  opened,  and  a  dark  stranger,  bronzed  with 
travel  and  dressed  in  foreign-looking  garments,  entered. 

He  stood  one  moment,  all  looking  curiously  at  him,  then 
crossing  the  floor,  he  kneeled  down  by  Mrs.  Pitkin's  chair, 
and  throwing  off  his  cap,  looked  her  close  in  the  eyes. 

"  Mother,  don't  you  know  me  ?  " 

She  looked  at  him  one  moment  with  that  still  earnest 
ness  peculiar  to  herself,  and  then  fell  into  his  arms.  "  Oh, 
my  son,  my  son  !  " 

There  were  a  few  moments  of  indescribable  confusion, 
during  which  Diana  retreated,  pale  and  breathless,  to  a 
neighboring  window,  and  stood  with  her  hand  over  the 
locket  which  she  had  always  worn  upon  her  heart. 

After  a  few  moments  he  came,  and  she  felt  him  by  her. 

"  What,  cousin  !  "  he  said  ;  "  no  welcome  from  you  ?  " 
She  gave  one  look,  and  he  took  her  in  his  arms.  She  felt 
the  beating  of  his  heart,  and  he  felt  hers.  Neither  spoke, 
yet  each  felt  at  that  moment  sure  of  the  other. 

"  I  say,  boys,"  said  James,  "  who  '11  help  bring  in  my 
sea  chest  ?  " 


THANKSGIVING  AGAIN  291 

Never  was  sea  chest  more  triumphantly  ushered ;  it  was 
a  contest  who  should  get  near  enough  to  take  some  part  in 
its  introduction,  and  soon  it  was  open,  and  James  began 
distributing  its  contents. 

"  There,  mother,"  said  he,  undoing  a  heavy  black  India 
satin  and  shaking  out  its  folds,  "  I  'm  determined  you  shall 
have  a  dress  fit  for  you ;  and  here  's  a  real  India  shawl  to 
go  with  it.  Get  those  on  and  you  '11  look  as  much  like  a 
queen  among  women  as  you  ought  to." 

Then  followed  something  for  every  member  of  the  fam 
ily,  received  with  frantic  demonstrations  of  applause  and 
appreciation  by  the  more  juvenile. 

"  Oh,  what 's  that  ?  "  said  Sam,  as  a  package  done  up  in 
silk  paper  and  tied  with  silver  cord  was  disclosed. 

"  That 's  —  oh  —  that 's  my  wife's  wedding-dress,"  said 
James,  unfolding  and  shaking  out  a  rich  satin  ;  "  and  here  's 
her  shawl,"  drawing  out  an  embroidered  box,  scented  with 
sandal-wood. 

The  boys  all  looked  at  Diana,  and  Diana  laughed  and 
grew  pale  and  red  all  in  the  same  breath,  as  James,  folding 
back  the  silk  and  shawl  in  their  boxes,  handed  them  to  her. 

Mrs.  Pitkin  laughed  and  kissed  her,  and  said  gayly,  "  All 
right,  my  daughter,  —  just  right." 

What  an  evening  that  was,  to  be  sure  !  What  a  confu 
sion  of  joy  and  gladness  ;  what  a  half-telling  of  a  hundred 
things  that  it  would  take  weeks  to  tell ! 

James  had  paid  the  mortgage  and  had  money  to  spare  ; 
and  how  he  got  it  all,  and  how  he  was  saved  at  sea,  and 
where  he  went,  and  what  befell  him  here  and  there,  he 
promised  to  be  telling  them  for  six  months  to  come. 

"  Well,  your  father  must  n't  be  kept  up  too  late,"  said 
Mrs.  Pitkin.  "  Let 's  have  prayers  now,  and  then  to-mor 
row  we  '11  be  fresh  to  talk  more." 

So  they  gathered  around  the  wide  kitchen  fire  and  the 
family  Bible  was  brought  out. 


292  DEACON  PITKIN'S  FARM 

"  Father,"  said  James,  drawing  out  of  his  pocket  the 
Bible  his  mother  had  given  him  at  parting,  "  let  me  read 
my  Psalm ;  it  has  been  my  Psalm  ever  since  I  left  you." 
There  was  a  solemn  thrill  in  the  little  circle  as  James  read 
the  verses :  — 

"  '  They  that  go  down  to  the  sea  in  ships,  that  do  business 
in  great  waters  ;  these  see  the  works  of  the  Lord  and  his 
wonders  in  the  deep.  For  he  commandeth  and  raiseth  the 
stormy  wind  which  lifteth  up  the  waves  thereof.  They 
mount  up  to  the  heaven  ;  they  go  down  again  to  the  depths  : 
their  soul  is  melted  because  of  trouble.  Then  they  cry  unto 
the  Lord  in  their  trouble,  and  he  bringeth  them  out  of  their 
distresses.  He  maketh  the  storm  a  calm,  so  that  the  waves 
thereof  are  still.  Then  are  they  glad  because  they  be  quiet, 
so  he  bringeth  them  unto  their  desired  haven.  Oh  that 
men  would  praise  the  Lord  for  his  goodness,  and  for  his 
wonderful  works  to  the  children  of  men  ! '  ' 

When  all  had  left  the  old  kitchen,  James  and  Diana  sat 
by  the  yet  glowing  hearth  and  listened  to  the  crickets,  and 
talked  over  all  the  past  and  the  future. 

"  And  now,"  said  James,  "  it 's  seven  years  since  I  left 
you,  and  to-morrow  is  the  seventh  Thanksgiving,  and  I've 
always  set  my  heart  on  getting  home  to  be  married  Thanks 
giving  evening." 

"  But,  dear  me,  Jim,  we  can't.      There  is  n't  time." 
"  Why  not  ?  —  we  've  got  all  the  time  there  is  !  " 
"  But  the  wedding-dress  can't  be  made,  possibly." 
"  Oh,  that  can  wait  till  the  week  after.      You  are  pretty 
enough  without  it !  " 

"  But  what  will  they  all  say  ?  " 

"  Who  cares  what  they  say  ?  I  don't,"  said  James. 
"  The  fact  is,  I  've  set  my  heart  on  it,  and  you  owe  me 
something  for  the  way  you  treated  me  the  last  Thanks 
giving  I  was  here,  seven  years  ago.  Now  don't  you  ?  " 


THANKSGIVING  AGAIN  293 

"  Well,  yes,  I  do,  so  have  it  just  as  you  will."  And  so 
it  was  accomplished  the  next  evening. 

And  among  the  wonders  of  Mapleton  Miss  Briskett  an 
nounced  it  as  chief,  that  it  was  the  first  time  she  ever  heard 
of  a  bride  that  was  married  first  and  had  her  wedding-dress 
made  the  week  after  !  She  never  had  heard  of  such  a 
thing. 

Yet,  strange  to  say,  for  years  after  neither  of  the  parties 
concerned  found  themselves  a  bit  the  worse  for  it. 


THE   FIRST   CHEISTMAS   OF   NEW   ENGLAND 
CHAPTER  I 

IN     THE     HARBOR    OF    CAPE    COD 

THE  shores  of  the  Atlantic  coast  of  America  may  well  be 
a  terror  to  navigators.  They  present  an  inexorable  wall, 
against  which  forbidding  and  angry  waves  incessantly  dash, 
and  around  which  shifting  winds  continually  rave.  The 
approaches  to  safe  harbors  are  few  in  number,  intricate  and 
difficult,  requiring  the  skill  of  practiced  pilots.  But,  as  if 
with  a  pitying  spirit  of  hospitality,  old  Cape  Cod,  breaking 
from  the  iron  line  of  the  coast,  like  a  generous-hearted  sailor 
intent  on  helpfulness,  stretches  an  hundred  miles  outward, 
and  curving  his  sheltering  arms  in  a  protective  circle,  gives 
a  noble  harborage.  Of  this  harbor  of  Cape  Cod  the  report 
of  our  governmental  Coast  Survey  thus  speaks  :  "  It  is  one 
of  the  finest  harbors  for  ships  of  war  on  the  whole  of  our 
Atlantic  coast.  The  width  and  freedom  from  obstruction 
of  every  kind  at  its  entrance  and  the  extent  of  sea-room 
upon  the  bay  side  make  it  accessible  to  vessels  of  the  largest 
class  in  almost  all  winds.  This  advantage,  its  capacity, 
depth  of  water,  excellent  anchorage,  and  the  complete  shel 
ter  it  affords  from  all  winds,  render  it  one  of  the  most  valu 
able  ship  harbors  upon  our  coast." 

We  have  been  thus  particular  in  our  mention  of  this 
place,  because  here,  in  this  harbor,  opened  the  first  scene  in 
the  most  wonderful  drama  of  modern  history.  Let  us  look 
into  the  magic  mirror  of  the  past  and  see  this  harbor  of  Cape 
Cod  on  the  morning  of  the  llth  of  November,  in  the  year 


IN  THE  HARBOR  OF  CAPE  COD         295 

of  our  Lord  1620,  as  described  to  us  in  the  simple  words  of 
the  pilgrims  :  "  A  pleasant  bay,  circled  round,  except  the 
entrance,  which  is  about  four  miles  over  from  land  to  land, 
compassed  about  to  the  very  sea  with  oaks,  pines,  junipers, 
sassafras,  and  other  sweet  weeds.  It  is  a  harbor  wherein  a 
thousand  sail  of  ship  may  safely  ride." 

Such  are  the  woody  shores  of  Cape  Cod  as  we  look  back 
upon  them  in  that  distant  November  day,  and  the  harbor 
lies  like  a  great  crystal  gem  on  the  bosom  of  a  virgin  wilder 
ness.  The  "  fir-trees,  the  pine-trees,  and  the  bay,"  rejoice 
together  in  freedom,  for  as  yet  the  axe  has  spared  them  ;  in 
the  noble  bay  no  shipping  has  found  shelter  ;  no  voice  or 
sound  of  civilized  man  has  broken  the  sweet  calm  of  the 
forest.  The  oak  leaves,  now  turned  to  crimson  and  maroon 
by  the  autumn  frosts,  reflect  themselves  in  flushes  of  color 
on  the  still  waters.  The  golden  leaves  of  the  sassafras  yet 
cling  to  the  branches  though  their  life  has  passed,  and  every 
brushing  wind  bears  showers  of  them  down  to  the  water. 
Here  and  there  the  dark  spires  of  the  cedar  and  the  green 
leaves  and  red  berries  of  the  holly  contrast  with  the  old  lighter 
tints.  The  forest  foliage  grows  down  to  the  water's  edge, 
so  that  the  dash  of  the  rising  and  falling  tide  washes  into 
the  shaggy  cedar  boughs  which  here  and  there  lean  over  and 
dip  in  the  waves.  No  voice  or  sound  from  earth  or  sky 
proclaims  that  anything  unwonted  is  coming  or  doing  on 
these  shores  to-day.  The  wandering  Indians,  moving  their 
hunting-camps  along  the  woodland  paths,  saw  no  sign  in  the 
stars  that  morning,  and  no  different  color  in  the  sunrise 
from  what  had  been  in  the  days  of  their  fathers.  Panther 
and  wild-cat  under  their  furry  coats  felt  no  thrill  of  coming 
dispossession,  and  saw  nothing  through  their  great  golden 
eyes  but  the  dawning  of  a  day  just  like  all  other  days  — 
when  "  the  sun  ariseth  and  they  gather  themselves  into  their 
dens  and  lay  them  down."  And  yet  alike  to  Indian,  pan 
ther,  and  wild-cat,  to  every  oak  of  the  forest,  to  every  foot 


296          THE   FIRST   CHRISTMAS   OF   NEW   ENGLAND 

of  land  in  America,  from  the  stormy  Atlantic  to  the  broad 
Pacific,  that  day  was  a  day  of  days. 

There  had  been  stormy  and  windy  weather,  but  now 
dawned  on  the  earth  one  of  those  still,  golden  times  of  No 
vember,  full  of  dreamy  rest  and  tender  calm.  The  skies 
above  were  blue  and  fair,  and  the  waters  of  the  curving  bay 
were  a  downward  sky  —  a  magical  underworld,  wherein  the 
crimson  oaks,  and  the  dusk  plumage  of  the  pine,  and  the 
red  holly-berries,  and  yellow  sassafras  leaves,  all  flickered 
and  glinted  in  wavering  bands  of  color  as  soft  winds  swayed 
the  glassy  floor  of  waters.  In  a  moment,  there  is  heard  in 
the  silent  bay  a  sound  of  a  rush  and  ripple,  different  from 
the  lap  of  the  many-tongued  waves  on  the  shore ;  and  si 
lently  as  a  cloud,  with  white  wings  spread,  a  little  vessel 
glides  into  the  harbor.  A  little  craft  is  she  —  not  larger 
than  the  fishing-smacks  that  ply  their  course  along  our 
coasts  in  summer ;  but  her  decks  are  crowded  with  men, 
women,  and  children,  looking  out  with  joyous  curiosity  on 
the  beautiful  bay,  where,  after  many  dangers  and  storms, 
they  first  have  found  safe  shelter  and  hopeful  harbor. 

That  small,  unknown  ship  was  the  Mayflower ;  those 
men  and  women  who  crowded  her  decks  were  that  little 
handful  of  God's  own  wheat  which  had  been  flailed  by 
adversity,  tossed  and  winnowed  till  every  husk  of  earthly 
selfishness  and  self-will  had  been  beaten  away  from  them 
and  left  only  pure  seed,  fit  for  the  planting  of  a  new  world. 
It  was  old  Master  Cotton  Mather  who  said  of  them,  "  The 
Lord  sifted  three  countries  to  find  seed  wherewith  to  plant 
America."  Hark  now  to  the  hearty  cry  of  the  sailors,  as 
with  a  plash  and  a  cheer  the  anchor  goes  down,  just  in  the 
deep  water  inside  of  Long  Point ;  and  then,  says  their 
journal,  "  being  now  passed  the  vast  ocean  and'  sea  of 
troubles,  before  their  preparation  unto  further  proceedings 
as  to  seek  out  a  place  for  habitation,  they  fell  down  on  their 
knees  and  blessed  the  Lord,  the  God  of  heaven,  who  had 


IN  THE  HAEBOR  OF  CAPE  COD         297 

brought  them  over  the  vast  and  furious  ocean,  and  delivered 
them  from  all  perils  and  miseries  thereof." 

Let  us  draw  nigh  and  mingle  with  this  singular  act  of 
worship.  Elder  Brewster,  with  his  well-worn  Geneva  Bible 
in  hand,  leads  the  thanksgiving  in  words  which,  though 
thousands  of  years  old,  seem  as  if  written  for  the  occasion 
of  that  hour  :  — 

"  Praise  the  Lord  because  he  is  good,  for  his  mercy  endur- 
eth  forever.  Let  them  which  have  been  redeemed  of  the 
Lord  show  how  he  delivereth  them  from  the  hand  of  the 
oppressor.  And  gathered  them  out  of  the  lands  :  from  the 
east,  and  from  the  west,  from  the  north,  and  from  the  south, 
when  they  wandered  in  deserts  and  wildernesses  out  of  the 
way  and  found  no  city  to  dwell  in.  Both  hungry  and 
thirsty,  their  soul  failed  in  them.  Then  they  cried  unto 
the  Lord  in  their  troubles,  and  he  delivered  them  in  their 
distresses.  And  led  them  forth  by  the  right  way,  that  they 
might  go  unto  a  city  of  habitation.  They  that  go  down  to 
the  sea  and  occupy  by  the  great  waters  :  they  see  the  works 
of  the  Lord  and  his  wonders  in  the  deep.  For  he  command- 
eth  and  raiseth  the  stormy  wind,  and  it  lifteth  up  the  waves 
thereof.  They  mount  up  to  heaven,  and  descend  to  the 
deep  :  so  that  their  soul  inelteth  for  trouble.  They  are 
tossed  to  and  fro,  and  stagger  like  a  drunken  man,  and  all 
their  cunning  is  gone.  Then  they  cry  unto  the  Lord  in 
their  trouble,  and  he  bringeth  them  out  of  their  distresses. 
He  turneth  the  storm  to  a  calm,  so  that  the  waves  thereof 
are  still.  When  they  are  quieted  they  are  glad,  and  he 
bringeth  them  unto  the  haven  where  they  would  be." 

As  yet,  the  treasures  of  sacred  song  which  are  the  liturgy 
of  modern  Christians  had  not  arisen  in  the  church.  There 
was  no  Watts,  and  no  Wesley,  in  the  days  of  the  pilgrims  ; 
they  brought  with  them  in  each  family,  as  the  most  precious 
of  household  possessions,  a  thick  volume  containing,  first, 
the  Book  of  Common  Prayer,  with  the  Psalter  appointed  to 


298          THE   FIKST   CHRISTMAS   OF  NEW   ENGLAND 

be  read  in  churches  ;  second,  the  whole  Bible  in  the  Geneva 
translation,  which  was  the  basis  on  which  our  present 
English  translation  was  made  ;  and,  third,  the  Psalms  of 
David,  in  metre,  by  Sternhold  and  Hopkins,  with  the  music 
notes  of  the  tunes,  adapted  to  singing.  Therefore  it  was 
that  our  little  band  were  able  to  lift  up  their  voices  together 
in  song,  and  that  the  noble  tones  of  Old  Hundred  for 
the  first  time  floated  over  the  silent  bay  and  mingled  with 
the  sound  of  winds  and  waters,  consecrating  our  American 
shores. 

"  All  people  that  on  earth  do  dwell, 

Sing  to  the  Lord  with  cheerful  voice: 
Him  serve  with  fear,  His  praise  forthtell; 
Come  ye  before  Him  and  rejoice. 

"The  Lord,  ye  know,  is  God  indeed; 
Without  our  aid  He  did  us  make ; 
We  are  His  flock,  He  doth  us  feed, 
And  for  his  sheep  He  doth  us  take. 

"  Oh  enter  then  His  gates  with  praise, 

Approach  with  joy  His  courts  unto: 
Praise,  laud,  and  bless  His  name  always, 
For  it  is  seemly  so  to  do. 

"  For  why  ?    The  Lord  our  God  is  good, 

His  mercy  is  forever  sure ; 
His  truth  at  all  times  firmly  stood, 
And  shall  from  age  to  age  endure." 

This  grand  hymn  rose  and  swelled  and  vibrated  in  the 
still  November  air ;  while  in  between  the  pauses  came  the 
warble  of  birds,  the  scream  of  the  jay,  the  hoarse  call  of 
hawk  and  eagle,  going  on  with  their  forest  ways  all  unmind 
ful  of  the  new  era  which  had  been  ushered  in  with  those 
solemn  sounds. 


THE   FIRST  DAY  ON   SHORE  299 

CHAPTER  II 

THE    FIRST    DAY    ON    SHORE 

The  sound  of  prayer  and  psalm- singing  died  away  on  the 
shore,  and  the  little  band,  rising  from  their  knees,  saluted 
each  other  in  that  genial  humor  which  always  possesses  a 
ship's  company  when  they  have  weathered  the  ocean  and 
come  to  land  together. 

"  Well,  Master  Jones,  here  we  are/'  said  Elder  Brewster 
cheerily  to  the  shipmaster. 

"Ay,  ay,  sir,  here  we  be  sure  enough;  but  I've  had 
many  a  shrewd  doubt  of  this  upshot.  I  tell  you,  sirs,  when 
that  beam  amidships  sprung  and  cracked,  Master  Coppin 
here  said  we  must  give  over  —  hands  could  n't  bring  her 
through.  Thou  rememberest,  Master  Coppin  ?  " 

"  That  I  do,"  replied  Master  Coppin,  the  first  mate,  a 
stocky,  cheery  sailor,  with  a  face  red  and  shining  as  a  glazed 
bun.  "  I  said  then  that  praying  might  save  her,  perhaps, 
but  nothing  else  would." 

"  Praying  would  n't  have  saved  her,"  said  Master  Brown, 
the  carpenter,  "  if  I  had  not  put  in  that  screw  and  worked 
the  beam  to  her  place  again." 

"Ay,  ay,  Master  Carpenter,"  said  Elder  Brewster,  "the 
Lord  hath  abundance  of  the  needful  ever  to  his  hand.  When 
He  wills  to  answer  prayer,  there  will  be  found  both  carpen 
ter  and  screws  in  their  season,  I  trow." 

"  Well,  Deb,"  said  Master  Coppin,  pinching  the  ear  of  a 
great  mastiff  bitch  who  sat  by  him,  "  what  sayest  thou  ? 
Give  us  thy  mind  on  it,  old  girl ;  say,  wilt  thou  go  deer- 
hunting  with  us  yonder  ?  " 

The  dog,  who  was  full  of  the  excitement  all  around, 
wagged  her  tail  and  gave  three  tremendous  barks,  whereat  a 
little  spaniel  with  curly  ears,  that  stood  by  Rose  Standish, 
barked  aloud. 


300          THE   FIRST   CHRISTMAS   OF   NEW   ENGLAND 

"  Well  clone  !  "  said  Captain  Miles  Standish.  "  Why, 
here  is  a  salute  of  ordnance  !  Old  Deb  is  in  the  spirit  of 
the  thing  and  opens  out  like  a  cannon.  The  old  girl  is 
spoiling  for  a  chase  in  those  woods." 

"  Father,  may  I  go  ashore  ?  I  want  to  see  the  country," 
said  Wrestling  Brewster,  a  bright,  sturdy  boy,  creeping  up 
to  Elder  Brewster  and  touching  his  father's  elbow. 

Thereat  there  was  a  crying  to  the  different  mothers  of 
girls  and  boys  tired  of  being  cooped  up,  —  "  Oh,  mother, 
mother,  ask  that  we  may  all  go  ashore." 

"  For  my  part,"  said  old  Margery,  the  serving-maid  to 
Elder  Brewster,  "  I  want  to  go  ashore  to  wash  and  be 
decent,  for  there  is  n't  a  soul  of  us  hath  anything  fit  for 
Christians.  There  be  springs  of  water,  I  trow." 

"  Never  doubt  it,  my  woman,"  said  Elder  Brewster ; 
"  but  all  things  in  their  order.  How  say  you,  Mr.  Carver  ? 
You  are  our  governor.  What  order  shall  we  take  ?  " 

"  We  must  have  up  the  shallop,"  said  Carver,  "  and 
send  a  picked  company  to  see  what  entertainment  there  may 
be  for  us  on  shore." 

"  And  I  counsel  that  all  go  well  armed,"  quoth  Captain 
Miles  Standish,  "for  these  men  of  the  forest  are  sharper 
than  a  thorn  hedge.  What !  what !  "  he  said,  looking  over 
to  the  eager  group  of  girls  and  boys,  "  ye  would  go  ashore, 
would  ye  ?  Why,  the  lions  and  bears  will  make  one  mouth 
ful  of  ye." 

"I'm  not  afraid  of  lions,"  said  young  Wrestling  Brewster 
in  an  aside  to  little  Love  Winslow,  a  golden-haired,  pale- 
cheeked  child,  of  a  tender  and  spiritual  beauty  of  face. 

"I'd  like  to  meet  a  lion,"  he  added,  "and  serve  him  as 
Samson  did.  I  'd  get  honey  out  of  him,  I  promise." 

"Oh,  there  you  are,  young  Master  Boastful!"  said  old 
Margery.  "  Mind  the  old  saying,  '  Brag  is  a  good  dog,  but 
Holdfast  is  better.' " 

"Dear  husband,"  said  Kose  Standish,  "  wilt  thou  go  ashore 
in  this  company  ?  " 


THE  FIRST  DAY   ON   SHORE  301 

"  Why,  aye,  sweetheart,  what  else  am  I  come  for,  and 
who  should  go  if  not  I  ?  " 

"Thou  art  so  very  venturesome,  Miles.'7 

"Even  so,  my  Rose  of  the  wilderness.  Why  else  am  I 
come  on  this  quest  ?  Not  being  good  enough  to  he  in  your 
church  nor  one  of  the  saints,  I  come  for  an  arm  of  flesh  to 
them,  and  so,  here  goes  on  my  armor. " 

And  as  he  spoke,  he  buried  his  frank,  good-natured  coun 
tenance  in  an  iron  headpiece,  and  Rose  hastened  to  help  him 
adjust  his  corselet. 

The  clang  of  armor,  the  bustle  and  motion  of  men  and 
children,  the  barking  of  dogs,  and  the  cheery  heave-0 !  of 
the  sailors  marked  the  setting  off  of  the  party  which  com 
prised  some  of  the  gravest  and  wisest,  as  well  as  the  young 
est  and  most  able-bodied  of  the  ship's  company.  The  im 
patient  children  ran  in  a  group  and  clustered  on  the  side 
of  the  ship  to  see  them  go.  Old  Deb,  with  her  two  half- 
grown  pups,  barked  and  yelped  after  her  master  in  the  boat, 
running  up  and  down  the  vessel's  deck  with  piteous  cries 
of  impatience. 

"  Come  hither,  dear  old  Deb,"  said  little  Love  Winslow, 
running  up  and  throwing  her  arms  round  the  dog's  rough 
neck  ;  "thou  must  not  take  on  so;  thy  master  will  be  back 
again  ;  so  be  a  good  dog  now,  and  lie  down." 

And  the  great  rough  mastiff  quieted  down  under  her  ca 
resses,  and  sitting  down  by  her  she  patted  and  played  with 
her,  with  her  little  thin  hands. 

"  See  the  darling,"  said  Rose  Standish ;  "  what  a  way 
that  baby  hath !  In  all  the  roughness  and  the  terrors  of 
the  sea  she  hath  been  like  a  little  sunbeam  to  us,  yet  she  is 
so  frail !  " 

"  She  hath  been  marked  in  the  womb  by  the  troubles  her 
mother  bore,"  said  old  Margery,  shaking  her  head.  "  She 
never  had  the  ways  of  other  babies,  but  hath  ever  that  wist 
ful  look — and  her  eyes  are  brighter  than  they  should  be. 


302          THE  FIRST   CHRISTMAS   OF   NEW   ENGLAND 

Mistress  Winslow  will  never  raise  that  child  —  now  mark 
me!" 

"  Take  care  !  "  said  Rose  ;  "  let  not  her  mother  hear  you." 

"Why,  look  at  her  beside  of  Wrestling  Brewster,  or 
Faith  Carver.  They  are  flesh  and  blood,  and  she  looks  as  if 
she  had  been  made  out  of  sunshine.  'T  is  a  sweet  babe  as 
ever  was ;  but  fitter  for  the  kingdom  of  heaven  than  our 
rough  life  —  deary  me !  a  hard  time  we  have  had  of  it.  I 
suppose  it  's  all  best,  but  I  don't  know." ' 

"  Oh,  never  talk  that  way,  Margery,"  said  Rose  Stan- 
dish  ;  "  we  must  all  keep  up  heart,  our  own  and  one  an 
other's." 

"  Ah,  well-a-day,  —  I  suppose  so,  but  then  I  look  at  my 
good  Master  Brewster  and  remember  how,  when  I  was.  a 
girl,  he  was  at  our  good  Queen  Elizabeth's  court,  ruffling 
it  with  the  best,  and  everybody  said  that  there  wasn't  a 
young  man  that  had  good  fortune  to  equal  his.  Why, 
Master  Davidson,  the  Queen's  Secretary  of  State,  thought 
all  the  world  of  him  5  and  when  he  went  to  Holland  on 
the  Queen's  business,  he  must  take  him  along  j  and  when 
he  took  the  keys  of  the  cities  there,  it  was  my  master  that 
he  trusted  them  to,  who  used  to  sleep  with  them  under  his 
pillow.  I  remember  when  he  came  home  to  the  Queen's 
court,  wearing  the  great  gold  chain  that  the  States  had 
given  him.  Ah,  me  !  I  little  thought  he  would  ever  come 
to  a  poor  man's  coat,  then  !  " 

"  Well,  good  Margery,"  said  Rose,  "  it  is  n't  the  coat 
but  the  heart  under  it,  —  that 's  the  thing.  Thou  hast 
more  cause  of  pride  in  thy  master's  poverty  than  in  his 
riches." 

"  Maybe  so,  —  I  don't  know,"  said  Margery  ;  "  but  he 
hath  had  many  a  sore  trouble  in  worldly  things,  —  driven 
and  hunted  from  place  to  place  in  England,  clapt  into 
prison,  and  all  he  had  eaten  up  with  fines  and  charges  and 
costs." 


THE   FIRST   DAY   ON   SHORE  303 

"  All  that  is  because  he  chose  rather  to  suffer  affliction 
with  the  people  of  God  than  to  enjoy  the  pleasures  of  sin 
for  a  season/'  said  Rose ;  "  he  shall  have  his  reward  by  and 
by." 

"Well,  there  be  good  men  and  godly  in  Old  England 
that  get  to  heaven  in  better  coats  and  with  easy  carriages 
and  fine  houses  and  servants,  and  I  would  my  master  had 
been  of  such.  But  if  he  must  come  to  the  wilderness  I 
will  come  with  him.  Gracious  me  !  what  noise  is  that  ?  " 
she  exclaimed,  as  a  sudden  report  of  firearms  from  below 
struck  her  ear.  "  I  do  believe  there  is  that  Frank  Billing- 
ton  at  the  gunpowder  ;  that  boy  will  never  leave,  I  do 
believe,  till  he  hath  blown  up  the  ship's  company." 

In  fact,  it  appeared  that  young  master  Frank,  impatient 
of  the  absence  of  his  father,  had  toled  Wrestling  Brewster 
and  two  other  of  the  boys  down  into  the  cabin  to  show  them 
his  skill  in  managing  his  father's  fowling-piece,  had  burst 
the  gun,  scattering  the  pieces  about  the  cabin. 

Margery  soon  appeared,  dragging  the  culprit  after  her. 
"  Look  here  now,  Master  Malapert,  see  what  you  '11  get 
when  your  father  comes  home  !  Lord-a-mercy !  here  was 
half  a  keg  of  powder  standing  open  !  Enough  to  have 
blown  us  all  up  !  Here,  Master  Clarke,  come  and  keep 
this  boy  with  you  till  his  father  come  back,  or  we  be  all 
sent  sky  high  before  we  know." 

At  eventide  the  boat  came  back  laden  to  the  water's  edge 
with  the  first  gettings  and  givings  from  the  new  soil   of 
America.      There    is    a    richness    and    sweetness    gleaming 
through  the  brief  records  of  these  men  in  their  journals, 
which  shows  how  the  new  land  was  seen  through  a  fond 
and  tender  medium,  half  poetic ;  and  its  new  products  lend 
a  savor  to  them  of  somewhat  foreign  and  rare. 
Of  this  day's  expedition  the  record  is  thus :  — 
"That  day,  so  soon  as  we  could,  we  set  ashore  some  fifteen 


304          THE   FIRST   CHRISTMAS   OF   NEW   ENGLAND 

or  sixteen  men  well  armed,  with  some  to  fetch  wood,  for  we 
had  none  left ;  as  also  to  see  what  the  land  was  and  what 
inhabitants  they  could  meet  with.  They  found  it  to  be  a 
small  neck  of  land  on  this  side  where  we  lay  in  the  bay, 
and  on  the  further  side  the  sea,  the  ground  or  earth,  sand 
hills,  much  like  the  downs  in  Holland,  but  much  better ; 
the  crust  of  the  earth  a  spit's  depth  of  excellent  black  earth  ; 
all  wooded  with  oaks,  pines,  sassafras,  juniper,  birch,  holly, 
vines,  some  ash  and  walnut ;  the  wood  for  the  most  part 
open  and  without  underwood,  fit  either  to  walk  or  to  ride 
in.  At  night  our  people  returned  and  found  not  any  people 
or  inhabitants,  and  laded  their  boat  with  juniper,  which 
smelled  very  sweet  and  strong,  and  of  which  we  burned  for 
the  most  part  while  we  were  there." 

"  See  there,"  said  little  Love  Winslow,  "  what  fine  red 
berries  Captain  Miles  Standish  hath  brought." 

"  Yea,  my  little  maid,  there  is  a  brave  lot  of  holly  berries 
for  thee  to  dress  the  cabin  withal.  We  shall  not  want  for 
Christmas  greens  here,  though  the  houses  and  churches  are 
yet  to  come." 

"  Yea,  Brother  Miles,"  said  Elder  Brewster,  "  the  trees 
of  the  Lord  are  full  of  sap  in  this  land,  even  the  cedars  of 
Lebanon,  which  he  hath  planted.  It  hath  the  look  to  me 
of  a  land  which  the  Lord  our  God  hath  blessed." 

"  There  is  a  most  excellent  depth  of  black,  rich  earth,"  said 
Carver,  "  and  a  great  tangle  of  grapevines,  whereon  the 
leaves  in  many  places  yet  hung,  and  we  picked  up  stores  of 
walnuts  under  a  tree  —  not  so  big  as  our  English  ones  — 
but  sweet  and  well-flavored." 

"  Know  ye,  brethren,  what  in  this  land  smelleth  sweetest 
to  me  ?  "  said  Elder  Brewster.  "  It  is  the  smell  of  liberty. 
The  soil  is  free  —  no  man  hath  claim  thereon.  In  Old 
England  a  poor  man  may  starve  right  on  his  mother's 
bosom  ;  there  may  be  stores  of  fish  in  the  river,  and  bird 
and  fowl  flying,  and  deer  running  by,  and  yet  though  a 


CHRISTMAS-TIDE   IN   PLYMOUTH   HARBOR  305 

man's  children  be  crying  for  bread,  an  he  catch  a  fish  or 
snare  a  bird,  he  shall  be  snatched  up  and  hanged.  This  is 
a  sore  evil  in  Old  England  ;  but  we  will  make  a  country 
here  for  the  poor  to  dwell  in,  where  the  wild  fruits  and  fish 
and  fowl  shall  be  the  inheritance  of  whosoever  will  have 
them  ;  and  every  man  shall  have  his  portion  of  our  good 
mother  earth,  with  no  lords  and  no  bishops  to  harry  and 
distrain,  and  worry  with  taxes  and  tithes." 

"  Amen,  brother  !  "  said  Miles  Standish,  "  and  thereto  I 
give  my  best  endeavors  with  sword  and  buckler." 

CHAPTER  III 

CHRISTMAS-TIDE    IN    PLYMOUTH    HARBOR 

For  the  rest  of  that  month  of  November  the  Mayflower 
lay  at  anchor  in  Cape  Cod  harbor,  and  formed  a  floating 
home  for  the  women  and  children,  while  the  men  were  out 
exploring  the  country,  with  a  careful  and  steady  shrewdness 
and  good  sense,  to  determine  where  should  be  the  site  of 
the  future  colony.  The  record  of  their  adventures  is  given 
in  their  journals  with  that  sweet  homeliness  of  phrase  which 
hangs  about  the  Old  English  of  that  period  like  the  smell 
of  rosemary  in  an  ancient  cabinet. 

We  are  told  of  a  sort  of  picnic  day,  when  <e  our  women 
went  on  shore  to  wash  and  all  to  refresh  themselves  ;  "  and 
fancy  the  times  there  must  have  been  among  the  little  com 
pany,  while  the  mothers  sorted  and  washed  and  dried  the 
linen,  and  the  children,  under  the  keeping  of  the  old  mas 
tiffs  and  with  many  cautions  against  the  wolves  and  wild 
cubs,  once  more  had  liberty  to  play  in  the  green  wood. 
For  it  appears  in  these  journals  how,  in  one  case,  the  little 
spaniel  of  John  Goodman  was  chased  by  two  wolves,  and 
was  fain  to  take  refuge  between  his  master's  legs  for  shelter. 
Goodman  "  had  nothing  in  hand,"  says  the  journal,  "  but 


306          THE   FIRST   CHRISTMAS   OF   NEW   ENGLAND 

took  up  a  stick  and  threw  at  one  of  them  and  hit  him,  and 
they  presently  ran  away,  but  came  again.  He  got  a  pale- 
board  in  his  hand,  but  they  both  sat  on  their  tails  a  good 
while,  grinning  at  him,  and  then  went  their  way  and  left 
him." 

Such  little  touches  show  what  the  care  of  families  must 
have  been  in  the  woodland  picnics,  and  why  the  ship  was, 
on  the  whole,  the  safest  refuge  for  the  women  and  children. 
We  are  told,  moreover,  how  the  party  who  had  struck  off 
into  the  wilderness,  "  having  marched  through  boughs  and 
bushes  and  under  hills  and  valleys  which  tore  our  very 
armor  in  pieces,  yet  could  meet  with  no  inhabitants  nor  find 
any  fresh  water  which  we  greatly  stood  in  need  of,  for  we 
brought  neither  beer  nor  water  with  us,  and  our  victual  was 
only  biscuit  and  Holland  cheese,  and  a  little  bottle  of  aqua 
vitae.  So  we  were  sore  athirst.  About  ten  o'clock  we 
came  into  a  deep  valley  full  of  brush,  sweet  gaile  and  long 
grass,  through  which  we  found  little  paths  or  tracks ;  and 
we  saw  there  a  deer  and  found  springs  of  water,  of  which 
we  were  heartily  glad,  and  sat  us  down  and  drunk  our  first 
New  England  water  with  as  much  delight  as  we  ever  drunk 
drink  in  all  our  lives.'5 

Three  such  expeditions  through  the  country,  with  all 
sorts  of  haps  and  mishaps  and  adventures,  took  up  the  time 
until  near  the  15th  of  December,  when,  having  selected  a 
spot  for  their  colony,  they  weighed  anchor  to  go  to  their 
future  home.  Plymouth  Harbor,  as  they  found  it,  is  thus 
described :  — 

"  This  harbor  is  a  bay  greater  than  Cape  Cod,  compassed 
with  a  goodly  land,  and  in  the  bay  two  fine  islands  unin 
habited,  wherein  are  nothing  but  woods,  oaks,  pines,  wal 
nuts,  beeches,  sassafras,  vines,  and  other  trees  which  we 
know  not.  The  bay  is  a  most  hopeful  place,  innumerable 
stores  of  fowl,  and  excellent  good ;  and  it  cannot  but  be  of 
fish  in  their  season.  Skate,  cod,  and  turbot,  and  herring 


CHRISTMAS-TIDE    IN   PLYMOUTH   HARBOR  307 

we  have  tasted  of  —  abundance  of  mussels  (clams)  the  best 
we  ever  saw;  and  crabs  and  lobsters  in  their  time,  infi 
nite." 

Of  the  mainland  they  write :  — 

"The  land  is,  for  a  spit's  depth,  excellent  black  mould  and 
fat  in  some  places.  Two  or  three  great  oaks,  pines,  walnut, 
beech,  ash,  birch,  hazel,  holly,  and  sassafras  in  abundance, 
and  vines  everywhere,  with  cherry-trees,  plum-trees,  and 
others  which  we  know  not.  Many  kind  of  herbs  we  found 
here  in  winter,  as  strawberry  leaves  innumerable,  sorrel,  yar 
row,  carvel,  brook-lime,  liverwort,  watercresses,  with  great 
store  of  leeks  and  onions,  and  an  excellent  strong  kind  of 
flax  and  hemp." 

It  is  evident  from  this  description  that  the  season  was  a 
mild  one  even  thus  late  in  December,  that  there  was  still  suffi 
cient  foliage  hanging  upon  the  trees  to  determine  the  species, 
and  that  the  pilgrims  viewed  their  new  motherland  through 
eyes  of  cheerful  hope. 

And  now  let  us  look  in  the  glass  at  them  once  more,  on 
Saturday  morning  of  the  23d  of  December.  The  little  May 
flower  lies  swinging  at  her  moorings  in  the  harbor,  while 
every  man  and  boy  who  could  use  a  tool  has  gone  on  shore 
to  cut  down  and  prepare  timber  for  future  houses.  Mary 
Winslow  and  Rose  Standish  are  sitting  together  on  deck, 
fashioning  garments,  while  little  Love  Winslow  is  playing 
at  their  feet  with  such  toys  as  the  new  world  afforded  her 
—  strings  of  acorns  and  scarlet  holly  berries  and  some  bird- 
claws  and  arrowheads  and  bright-colored  ears  of  Indian  corn, 
which  Captain  Miles  Standish  has  brought  home  to  her  from 
one  of  their  explorations. 

Through  the  still  autumnal  air  may  now  and  then  be  heard 
the  voices  of  men  calling  to  one  another  on  shore,  the  quick, 
sharp  ring  of  axes,  and  anon  the  crash  of  falling  trees  with 
shouts  from  juveniles  as  the  great  forest  monarch  is  laid  low. 
Some  of  the  women  are  busy  below,  sorting  over  and  arrang- 


308          THE   FIRST  CHEISTMAS   OF  NEW  ENGLAND 

ing  their  little  household  stores  and  stuff  with  a  view  to 
moving  on  shore,  and  holding  domestic  consultations  with 
each  other.  A  sadness  hangs  over  the  little  company,  for 
since  their  arrival  the  stroke  of  death  had  more  than  once 
fallen ;  we  find  in  Bradford's  brief  record  that  by  the  24th 
of  December  six  had  died.  What  came  nearest  to  the  hearts 
of  all  was  the  loss  of  Dorothea  Bradford,  who,  when  all  the 
men  of  the  party  were  absent  on  an  exploring  tour,  acci 
dentally  fell  over  the  side  of  the  vessel  and  sunk  in  the 
deep  waters.  What  this  loss  was  to  the  husband  and  the 
little  company  of  brothers  and  sisters  appears  by  no  note  or 
word  of  wailing,  merely  by  a  simple  entry  which  says  no 
more  than  the  record  on  a  gravestone,  that,  "  on  the  7th 
of  December,  Dorothy,  wife  of  William  Bradford,  fell  over 
and  was  drowned.'7 

That  much  -  enduring  company  could  afford  themselves 
few  tears.  Earthly  having  and  enjoying  was  a  thing  long 
since  dismissed  from  their  calculations.  They  were  living 
on  the  primitive  Christian  platform ;  they  "  rejoiced  as 
though  they  rejoiced  not,"  and  they  "  wept  as  though  they 
wept  not,"  and  they  "  had  wives  and  children  as  though 
they  had  them  not,"  or,  as  one  of  themselves  expressed  it, 
"We  are  in  all  places,  strangers,  pilgrims,  travelers,  and 
sojourners  ;  our  dwelling  is  but  a  wandering,  our  abiding 
but  as  a  fleeting,  our  home  is  nowhere  but  in  the  heavens,  in 
that  house  not  made  with  hands,  whose  builder  and  maker 
is  God."  When  one  of  their  number  fell  they  were  forced 
to  do  as  soldiers  in  the  stress  of  battle  —  close  up  the  ranks 
and  press  on. 

But  Mary  Winslow,  as  she  sat  over  her  sewing,  dropped 
now  and  then  a  tear  down  on  her  work  for  the  loss  of  her 
sister  and  counselor  and  long-tried  friend.  From  the  lower 
part  of  the  ship  floated  up,  at  intervals,  snatches  of  an  old 
English  ditty  that  Margery  was  singing  while  she  moved  to 
and  fro  about  her  work,  one  of  those  genuine  English  melo- 


CHRISTMAS-TIDE  IN   PLYMOUTH   HARBOR  309 

dies,  full  of  a  rich,  strange  mournfulness  blent  with  a  sooth 
ing  pathos  :  — 

"Fear  no  more  the  heat  o'  the  sun 

Nor  the  furious  winter  rages, 
Thou  thy  worldly  task  hast  done, 
Home  art  gone  and  ta'en  thy  wages." 

The  air  was  familiar,  and  Mary  Winslow,  dropping  her 
work  in  her  lap,  involuntarily  joined  in  it :  — 

"  Fear  no  more  the  frown  of  the  great, 
Thou  art  past  the  tyrant's  stroke  ; 
Care  no  more  to  clothe  and  eat, 
To  thee  the  reed  is  as  the  oak." 

"  There  goes  a  great  tree  on  shore !  "  quoth  little  Love 
Winslow,  clapping  her  hands.  "  Dost  hear,  mother  ?  I  ?ve 
been  counting  the  strokes  —  fifteen  —  and  then  crackle  ! 
crackle  !  crackle !  and  down  it  comes !  " 

"  Peace,  darling,"  said  Mary  Winslow  ;  "  hear  what  old 
Margery  is  singing  below  :  — 

"  Fear  no  more  the  lightning's  flash, 

Nor  the  all-dreaded  thunder  stone  ; 
Fear  not  slander,  censure  rash  — 

Thou  hast  finished  joy  and  moan. 
All  lovers  young  —  all  lovers  must 

Consign  to  thee,  and  come  to  dust." 

"  Why  do  you  cry,  mother  ?  "  said  the  little  one,  climb 
ing  on  her  lap  and  wiping  her  tears. 

"  I  was  thinking  of  dear  Auntie,  who  is  gone  from  us." 

"  She  is  not  gone  from  us,  mother." 

"  My  darling,  she  is  with  Jesus." 

"  Well,  mother,  Jesus  is  ever  with  us  —  you  tell  me  that ; 
and  if  she  is  with  him  she  is  with  us  too  —  I  know  she  is, 
for  sometimes  I  see  her.  She  sat  by  me  last  night  and 
stroked  my  head  when  that  ugly  stormy  wind  waked  me  — 
she  looked  so  sweet,  oh,  ever  so  beautiful  !  —  and  she  made 
me  go  to  sleep  so  quiet.  It  is  sweet  to  be  as  she  is,  mother 
—  not  away  from  us  but  with  Jesus." 


310          THE  FIRST   CHRISTMAS   OF  NEW   ENGLAND 

"  These  little  ones  see  further  in  the  kingdom  than  we," 
said  Rose  Standish.  "  If  we  would  be  like  them,  we  should 
take  things  easier.  When  the  Lord  would  show  who  was 
greatest  in  his  kingdom,  he  took  a  little  child  on  his  lap." 

"  Ah  me,  Rose  !  "  said  Mary  Winslow,  "  I  am  aweary  in 
spirit  with  this  tossing  sea-life.  I  long  to  have  a  home  on 
dry  land  once  more,  be  it  ever  so  poor.  The  sea  wearies 
me.  Only  think,  it  is  almost  Christmas-time,  only  two  days 
now  to  Christmas.  How  shall  we  keep  it  in  these  woods  ?  " 

"  Aye,  aye,"  said  old  Margery,  coming  up  at  the  mo 
ment,  "  a  brave  muster  and  to  do  is  there  now  in  old  Eng 
land  ;  and  men  and  boys  going  forth  singing  and  bearing 
home  branches  of  holly,  and  pine,  and  mistletoe  for  Christ 
mas  greens.  Oh !  I  remember  I  used  to  go  forth  with 
them  and  help  dress  the  churches.  God  help  the  poor 
children ;  they  will  grow  up  in  the  wilderness  and  never 
see  such  brave  sights  as  I  have.  They  will  never  know 
what  a  church  is,  such  as  they  are  in  old  England,  with 
fine  old  windows  like  the  clouds,  and  rainbows,  and  great 
wonderful  arches  like  the  very  skies  above  us,  and  the  brave 
music  with  the  old  organs  rolling  and  the  boys  marching 
in  white  garments  and  singing  so  as  should  draw  the  very 
heart  out  of  one.  All  this  we  have  left  behind  in  old  Eng 
land  —  ah  !  welladay  !  welladay  !  " 

"  Oh,  but,  Margery,"  said  Mary  Winslow,  "  we  have  a 
'  better  country '  than  old  England,  where  the  saints  and 
angels  are  keeping  Christmas ;  we  confess  that  we  are 
strangers  and  pilgrims  on  earth." 

And  Rose  Standish  immediately  added  the  familiar  quo 
tation  from  the  Geneva  Bible :  — 

"  For  they  that  say  such  things  declare  plainly  that  they 
seek  a  country.  For  if  they  had  been  mindful  of  that 
country  from  whence  they  came  out  they  had  leisure  to 
have  returned.  But  now  they  desire  a  better  —  that  is,  an 
heavenly  ;  wherefore  God  is  not  ashamed  of  them  to  be 
called  their  God." 


CHRISTMAS-TIDE   IN   PLYMOUTH   HARBOR  311 

The  fair  young  face  glowed  as  she  repeated  the  heroic 
words,  for  already,  though  she  knew  it  not,  Rose  Stan- 
dish  was  feeling  the  approaching  sphere  of  the  angel  life. 
Strong  in  spirit,  as  delicate  in  frame,  she  had  given  herself 
and  drawn  her  martial  husband  to  the  support  of  a  great 
and  noble  cause ;  but  while  the  spirit  was  ready,  the  flesh 
was  weak,  and  even  at  that  moment  her  name  was  written 
in  the  Lamb's  Book  to  enter  the  higher  life  in  one  short 
month's  time  from  that  Christmas.  Only  one  month  of 
sweetness  and  perfume  was  that  sweet  rose  to  shed  over 
the  hard  and  troubled  life  of  the  pilgrims,  for  the  saints 
and  angels  loved  her,  and  were  from  day  to  day  gently  un 
tying  mortal  bands  to  draw  her  to  themselves.  Yet  was 
there  nothing  about  her  of  mournfulness ;  on  the  contrary, 
she  was  ever  alert  and  bright,  with  a  ready  tongue  to  cheer 
and  a  helpful  hand  to  do ;  and,  seeing  the  sadness  that 
seemed  stealing  over  Mary  Winslow,  she  struck  another 
key,  and,  catching  little  Love  up  in  her  arms,  said  cheerily, 
"  Come  hither,  pretty  one,  and  Rose  will  sing  thee  a 
brave  carol  for  Christmas.  We  won't  be  down-hearted,  will 
we  ?  Hark  now  to  what  the  minstrels  used  to  sing  under 
my  window  when  I  was  a  little  girl :  — 

"  I  saw  three  ships  come  sailing  in 
On  Christmas  Day,  on  Christmas  Day, 
I  saw  three  ships  come  sailing  in 
On  Christmas  Day  in  the  morning. 

"  And  what  was  in  those  ships  all  three 
On  Christmas  Day,  on  Christmas  Day, 
And  what  was  in  those  ships  all  three 
On  Christmas  Day  in  the  morning  ? 

"  Our  Saviour  Christ  and  his  laydie, 
On  Christmas  Day,  on  Christmas  Day, 
Our  Saviour  Christ  and  his  laydie 
On  Christmas  day  in  the  morning. 

"  Pray,  whither  sailed  those  ships  all  three, 
On  Christmas  Day,  on  Christmas  Day  ? 


312          THE  FIRST   CHRISTMAS   OF  NEW  ENGLAND 

Oh,  they  sailed  into  Bethlehem, 
On  Christmas  Day  in  the  morning. 

"  And  all  the  bells  on  earth  shall  ring 
On  Christmas  Day,  on  Christmas  Day  ; 
And  all  the  angels  in  heaven  shall  sing 
On  Christmas  Day  in  the  morning. 

"  Then  let  us  all  rejoice  amain, 
On  Christmas  Day,  on  Christmas  Day; 
Then  let  xis  all  rejoice  amain 
On  Christmas  Day  in  the  morning." 

"Now,  is  n't  that  a  brave  ballad  ?  "  said  Rose. 
"  Yea,  and  thou  singest  like  a  real  English  robin,"  said 
Margery,  "  to  do  the  heart  good  to  hear  thee." 


CHAPTER  IV 
ELDER  BREWSTER'S  CHRISTMAS  SERMON 

Sunday  morning  found  the  little  company  gathered  once 
more  on  the  ship,  with  nothing  to  do  but  rest  and  remember 
their  homes,  temporal  and  spiritual  —  homes  backward,  in 
old  England,  and  forward  in  heaven.  They  were,  every 
man  and  woman  of  them,  English  to  the  backbone.  From 
Captain  Jones  who  commanded  the  ship  to  Elder  Brewster 
who  ruled  and  guided  in  spiritual  affairs,  all  alike  were  of 
that  stock  and  breeding  which  made  the  Englishman  of  the 
days  of  Bacon  and  Shakespeare,  and  in  those  days  Christmas 
was  knit  into  the  heart  of  every  one  of  them  by  a  thousand 
threads,  which  no  after  years  could  untie. 

Christmas  carols  had  been  sung  to  them  by  nurses  and 
mothers  and  grandmothers  ;  the  Christmas  holly  spoke  to 
them  from  every  berry  and  prickly  leaf,  full  of  dearest 
household  memories.  Some  of  them  had  been  men  of  sub 
stance  among  the  English  gentry,  and  in  their  prosperous 
days  had  held  high  festival  in  ancestral  halls  in  the  season 
of  good  cheer.  Elder  Brewster  himself  had  been  a  rising 


ELDER  BREWSTER'S  CHRISTMAS  SERMON        313 

young  diplomat  in  the  court  of  Elizabeth,  in  the  days  when 
the  Lord  Keeper  of  the  Seals  led  the  revels  of  Christmas 
as  Lord  of  Misrule. 

So  that,  though  this  Sunday  morning  arose,  gray  and 
lowering,  with  snowflakes  hovering  through  the  air,  there 
was  Christmas  in  the  thoughts  of  every  man  and  woman 
among  them  —  albeit  it  was  the  Christmas  of  wanderers 
and  exiles  in  a  wilderness  looking  back  to  bright  home-fires 
across  stormy  waters. 

The  men  had  come  back  from  their  work  on  shore  with 
branches  of  green  pine  and  holly,  and  the  women  had  stuck 
them  about  the  ship,  not  without  tearful  thoughts  of  old 
home-places,  where  their  childhood  fathers  and  mothers  did 
the  same. 

Bits  and  snatches  of  Christmas  carols  were  floating  all 
around  the  ship  like  the  land-birds  blown  far  out  to  sea. 
In  the  forecastle  Master  Coppin  was  singing :  — 

"  Come,  bring  with  a  noise, 
My  merry  boys, 

The  Christmas  log  to  the  firing  ; 
While  my  good  dame,  she 
Bids  ye  all  be  free, 

And  drink  to  your  hearts'  desiring. 
Drink  now  the  strong  beer, 
Cut  the  white  loaf  here. 

The  while  the  meat  is  shredding 
For  the  rare  minced  pie, 
And  the  plums  stand  by 

To  fill  the  paste  that 's  a-kneading." 

"Ah,  welladay,  Master  Jones,  it  is  dull  cheer  to  sing 
Christmas  songs  here  in  the  woods,  with  only  the  owls  and 
the  bears  for  choristers.  I  wish  I  could  hear  the  bells  of 
merry  England  once  more." 

And  down  in  the  cabin  Rose  Standish  was  hushing  little 
Peregrine,  the  first  American-born  baby,  with  a  Christmas 
lullaby  :  — 

"This  winter's  night 
I  saw  a  sight  — 


314          THE   FIRST   CHRISTMAS   OF   NEW   ENGLAND 


A  star  as  bright  as  day; 
And  ever  among 
A  maiden  sung, 

Lullay,  by-by,  lullay  ! 

"  This  lovely  laydie  sat  and  sung, 

And  to  her  child  she  said, 
My  son,  my  brother,  and  my  father  dear, 

Why  lyest  thou  thus  in  hayd  ? 
My  sweet  bird, 
Tho'  it  betide 

Thou  be  not  king  veray  ; 
But  nevertheless 
I  will  not  cease 

To  sing,  by-by,  lullay  ! 

"  The  child  then  spake  in  his  talking, 

And  to  his  mother  he  said, 
It  happeneth,  mother,  I  am  a  king, 

In  crib  though  I  be  laid, 
For  angels  bright 
Did  down  alight, 

Thou  knowest  it  is  no  nay  ; 
And  of  that  sight 
Thou  may'st  be  light 

To  sing,  by-by,  lullay  ! 

"  Now,  sweet  son,  since  thou  art  a  king, 

Why  art  thou  laid  in  stall? 
Why  not  ordain  thy  bedding 

In  some  great  king  his  hall  ? 
We  thinketh  't  is  right 
That  king  or  knight 

Should  be  in  good  array  ; 
And  them  among, 
It  were  no  wrong 

To  sing,  by-by,  lullay  ! 

"  Mary,  mother,  I  am  thy  child, 

Tho'  I  be  laid  in  stall  ; 
Lords  and  dukes  shall  worship  me, 

And  so  shall  kinges  all. 
And  ye  shall  see 
That  kinges  three 

Shall  come  on  the  twelfth  day  ; 
For  this  behest 
Give  me  thy  breast, 

And  sing,  by-by,  lullay  !  " 


ELDER  BREWSTER'S  CHRISTMAS  SERMON        315 

"  See  here,"  quoth  Miles  Standish,  "  when  my  Eose  sing- 
eth,  the  children  gather  round  her  like  bees  round  a  flower. 
Come,  let  us  all  strike  up  a  goodly  carol  together.  Sing  one, 
sing  all,  girls  and  hoys,  and  get  a  bit  of  Old  England's 
Christmas  before  to-morrow,  when  we  must  to  our  work  on 
shore." 

Thereat  Eose  struck  up  a  familiar  ballad-metre  of  a  catch 
ing  rhythm,  and  every  voice  of  young  and  old  was  soon 
joining  in  it :  — 

"  Behold  a  silly,  1  tender  Babe, 

In  freezing  winter  night, 
In  homely  manger  trembling  lies  ; 

Alas  !  a  piteous  sight, 
The  inns  are  full,  no  man  will  yield 

This  little  Pilgrim  bed  ; 
But  forced  He  is  with  silly  beasts 

In  crib  to  shroud  His  head. 
Despise  Him  not  for  lying  there, 

First  what  He  is  inquire  : 
An  orient  pearl  is  often  found 

In  depths  of  dirty  mire. 

"  Weigh  not  His  crib,  His  wooden  dish, 

Nor  beasts  that  by  Him  feed  ; 
Weigh  not  His  mother's  poor  attire, 

Nor  Joseph's  simple  weed. 
This  stable  is  a  Prince's  court, 

The  crib  His  chair  of  state, 
The  beasts  are  parcel  of  His  pomp, 

The  wooden  dish  His  plate. 
The  persons  in  that  poor  attire 

His  royal  liveries  wear  ; 
The  Prince  Himself  is  come  from  Heaven, 

This  pomp  is  prized  there. 
With  joy  approach,  O  Christian  wight. 

Do  homage  to  thy  King  ; 
And  highly  praise  His  humble  pomp, 

Which  He  from  Heaven  doth  bring." 

The  cheerful  sounds  spread  themselves  through  the  ship 
like  the  flavor  of  some  rare  perfume,  bringing  softness  of 
heart  through  a  thousand  tender  memories.    Anon,  the  hour 
1  Old  English  —  simple. 


316          THE  FIRST  CHRISTMAS  OF  NEW   ENGLAND 

of  Sabbath  morning  worship  drew  on,  and  Elder  Brewster 
read  from  the  New  Testament  the  whole  story  of  the  Na 
tivity,  and  then  gave  a  sort  of  Christmas  homily  from  the 
words  of  St.  Paul,  in  the  eighth  chapter  of  Romans,  the 
sixth  and  seventh  verses,  which  the  Geneva  version  thus 
renders  :  — 

"  For  the  wisdom  of  the  flesh  is  death,  but  the  wisdom  of 
the  spirit  is  life  and  peace. 

"  For  the  wisdom  of  the  flesh  is  enmity  against  God,  for 
it  is  not  subject  to  the  law  of  God,  neither  indeed  can  be.'7 

"  Ye  know  full  well,  dear  brethren,  what  the  wisdom  of 
the  flesh  sayeth.  The  wisdom  of  the  flesh  sayeth  to  each 
one,  '  Take  care  of  thyself ;  look  after  thyself,  to  get  and 
to  have  and  to  hold  and  to  enjoy.'  The  wisdom  of  the  flesh 
sayeth,  '  So  thou  art  warm,  full,  and  in  good  liking,  take 
thine  ease,  eat,  drink,  and  be  merry,  and  care  not  how 
many  go  empty  and  be  lacking.'  But  ye  have  seen  in  the 
gospel  this  morning  that  this  was  not  the  wisdom  of  our 
Lord  Jesus  Christ,  who,  though  he  was  Lord  of  all,  became 
poorer  than  any,  that  we,  through  His  poverty,  might  be 
come  rich.  When  our  Lord  Jesus  Christ  came,  the  wisdom 
of  the  flesh  despised  Him ;  the  wisdom  of  the  flesh  had  no 
room  for  Him  at  the  inn. 

"  There  was  room  enough  always  for  Herod  and  his  con 
cubines,  for  the  wisdom  of  the  flesh  set  great  store  by 
them  ;  but  a  poor  man  and  woman  were  thrust  out  to  a 
stable  ;  and  there  was  a  poor  baby  born  whom  the  wisdom 
of  the  flesh  knew  not,  because  the  wisdom  of  the  flesh  is 
enmity  against  God. 

"  The  wisdom  of  the  flesh,  brethren,  ever  despiseth  the 
wisdom  of  God,  because  it  knoweth  it  not.  The  wisdom  of 
the  flesh  looketh  at  the  thing  that  is  great  and  strong  and 
high ;  it  looketh  at  riches,  at  kings'  courts,  at  fine  clothes 
and  fine  jewels  and  fine  feastings,  and  it  despiseth  the  little 
and  the  poor  and  the  weak. 


ELDER  BREWSTER'S  CHRISTMAS  SERMON        317 

"  But  the  wisdom  of  the  Spirit  goeth  to  worship  the  poor 
babe  in  the  manger,  and  layeth  gold  and  myrrh  and  frank 
incense  at  his  feet  while  he  lieth  in  weakness  and  poverty, 
as  did  the  wise  men  who  were  taught  of  God. 

"  Now,  forasmuch  as  our  Saviour  Christ  left  His  riches 
and  throne  in  glory  and  came  in  weakness  and  poverty  to 
this  world,  that  he  might  work  out  a  mighty  salvation  that 
shall  be  to  all  people,  how  can  we  better  keep  Christmas 
than  to  follow  in  His  steps  ?  We  be  a  little  company  who 
have  forsaken  houses  and  lands  and  possessions,  and  come 
here  unto  the  wilderness  that  we  may  prepare  a  resting- 
place  whereto  others  shall  come  to  reap  what  we  shall  sow. 
And  to-morrow  we  shall  keep  our  first  Christmas,  not  in 
flesh-pleasing  and  in  reveling  and  in  fullness  of  bread,  but 
in  small  beginning  and  great  weakness,  as  our  Lord  Christ 
kept  it  when  He  was  born  in  a  stable  and  lay  in  a  manger. 

"  To-morrow,  God  willing,  we  will  all  go  forth  to  do  good 
honest  Christian  work,  and  begin  the  first  house-building 
in  this  our  New  England  —  it  may  be  roughly  fashioned, 
but  as  good  a  house,  I  '11  warrant  me,  as  our  Lord  Christ 
had  on  the  Christmas  Day  we  wot  of.  And  let  us  not  faint 
in  heart  because  the  wisdom  of  the  world  despiseth  what 
we  do.  Though  Sanballat  the  Horonite,  and  Tobias  the 
Ammonite,  and  Geshem  the  Arabian  make  scorn  of  us,  and 
say,  '  What  do  these  weak  Jews  ?  If  a  fox  go  up,  he  shall 
break  down  their  stone  wall ; '  yet  the  Lord  our  God  is 
with  us,  and  He  can  cause  our  work  to  prosper. 

"  The  wisdom  of  the  Spirit  seeth  the  grain  of  mustard- 
seed,  that  is  the  least  of  all  seeds,  how  it  shall  become  a 
great  tree,  and  the  fowls  of  heaven  shall  lodge  in  its 
branches.  Let  us,  then,  lift  up  the  hands  that  hang  down 
and  the  feeble  knees,  and  let  us  hope  that,  like  as  great 
salvation  to  all  people  came  out  of  small  beginnings  of 
Bethlehem,  so  the  work  which  we  shall  begin  to-morrow 
shall  be  for  the  good  of  many  nations. 


318          THE  FIRST  CHRISTMAS   OF   NEW   ENGLAND 

"  It  is  a  custom  on  this  Christmas  Day  to  give  love-pres 
ents.  What  love-gift  giveth  our  Lord  Jesus  on  this  day  ? 
Brethren,  it  is  a  great  one  and  a  precious ;  as  St.  Paul  said 
to  the  Philippians  :  '  For  unto  you  it  is  given  for  Christ, 
not  only  that  ye  should  believe  on  Him,  but  also  that  ye 
should  suffer  for  His  sake ; '  and  St.  Peter  also  saith,  '  Be 
hold,  we  count  them  blessed  which  endure.'  And  the  holy 
Apostles  rejoiced  that  they  were  counted  worthy  to  suffer 
rebuke  for  the  name  of  Jesus. 

"  Our  Lord  Christ  giveth  us  of  His  cup  and  His  baptism ; 
He  giveth  of  the  manger  and  the  straw ;  He  giveth  of  per 
secutions  and  afflictions  ;  He  giveth  of  the  crown  of  thorns, 
and  right  dear  unto  us  be  these  gifts. 

"  And  now  will  I  tell  these  children  a  story,  which  a 
cunning  playwright,  whom  I  once  knew  in  our  Queen's 
court,  hath  made  concerning  gifts  :  — 

"  A  great  king  would  marry  his  daughter  worthily,  and 
so  he  caused  three  caskets  to  be  made,  in  one  of  which  he 
hid  her  picture.  The  one  casket  was  of  gold  set  with  dia 
monds,  the  second  of  silver  set  with  pearls,  and  the  third  a 
poor  casket  of  lead. 

"  Now  it  was  given  out  that  each  comer  should  have  but 
one  choice,  and  if  he  chose  the  one  with  the  picture  he 
should  have  the  lady  to  wife. 

"  Divers  kings,  knights  and  gentlemen  came  from  far, 
but  they  never  won,  because  they  always  snatched  at  the 
gold  and  the  silver  caskets,  with  the  pearls  and  diamonds. 
So,  when  they  opened  these,  they  found  only  a  grinning 
death's-head  or  a  fool's  cap. 

"But  anon  cometh  a  true,  brave  knight  and  gentleman, 
who  chooseth  for  love  alone  the  old  leaden  casket ;  and, 
behold,  within  is  the  picture  of  her  he  loveth  !  and  they 
were  married  with  great  feasting  and  content. 

"  So  our  Lord  Jesus  doth  not  offer  himself  to  us  in  silver 
and  gold  and  jewels,  but  in  poverty  and  hardness  and  want ; 


ELDER  BREWSTER'S  CHRISTMAS  SERMON        319 

but  whoso  chooseth  them  for  His  love's  sake  shall  find  Him 
therein  whom  his  soul  loveth,  and  shall  enter  with  joy  to 
the  marriage  supper  of  the  Lamb. 

"  And  when  the  Lord  shall  come  again  in  his  glory,  then 
he  shall  bring  worthy  gifts  with  him,  for  he  saith  :  '  Be 
thou  faithful  unto  death,  and  I  will  give  thee  a  crown  of 
life ;  to  him  that  overcometh  I  will  give  to  eat  of  the  hid 
den  manna,  and  I  will  give  him  a  white  stone  with  a  new 
name  that  no  man  knoweth  save  he  that  receiveth  it.  He 
that  overcometh  and  keepeth  my  words,  I  will  give  power 
over  the  nations  and  I  will  give  him  the  morning  star.' 

"  Let  us  then  take  joyfully  Christ's  Christmas  gifts  of 
labors  and  adversities  and  crosses  to-day,  that  when  he  shall 
appear  we  may  have  these  great  and  wonderful  gifts  at  his 
coming ;  for  if  we  suffer  with  him  we  shall  also  reign ;  but 
if  we  deny  him,  he  also  will  deny  us." 

And  so  it  happens  that  the  only  record  of  Christmas  Day 
in  the  pilgrims'  journal  is  this  :  — 

"  Monday,  the  25th,  being  Christmas  Day,  we  went  ashore, 
some  to  fell  timber,  some  to  saw,  some  to  rive,  and  some  to 
carry :  and  so  no  man  rested  all  that  day.  But  towards 
night  some,  as  they  were  at  work,  heard  a  noise  of  Indians, 
which  caused  us  all  to  go  to  our  muskets  ;  but  we  heard 
no  further,  so  we  came  aboard  again,  leaving  some  to  keep 
guard.  That  night  we  had  a  sore  storm  of  wind  and  rain. 
But  at  night  the  shipmaster  caused  us  to  have  some  beer 
aboard." 

So  worthily  kept  they  the  first  Christmas,  from  which 
comes  all  the  Christmas  cheer  of  New  England  to-day. 
There  is  no  record  how  Mary  Winslow  and  Kose  Stan- 
dish  and  others,  with  women  and  children,  came  ashore  and 
walked  about  encouraging  the  builders  ;  and  how  little  Love 
gathered  stores  of  bright  checkerberries  and  partridge  plums, 
and  was  made  merry  in  seeing  squirrels  and  wild  rabbits ; 
nor  how  old  Margery  roasted  certain  wild  geese  to  a  turn  at 


320          THE   FIKST   CHRISTMAS   OF   NEW   ENGLAND 

a  woodland  fire,  and  conserved  wild  cranberries  with  honey 
for  sauce.  In  their  journals  the  good  pilgrims  say  they 
found  bushels  of  strawberries  in  the  meadows  in  December. 
But  we,  knowing  the  nature  of  things,  know  that  these 
must  have  been  cranberries,  which  grow  still  abundantly 
around  Plymouth  harbor. 

And  at  the  very  time  that  all  this  was  doing  in  the  wil 
derness,  and  the  men  were  working  yeomanly  to  build  a  new 
nation,  in  King  James's  court  the  ambassadors  of  the  French 
King  were  being  entertained  with  maskings  and  mummer- 
ings,  wherein  the  staple  subject  of  merriment  was  the 
Puritans  ! 

So  goes  the  wisdom  of  the  world  and  its  ways  —  and  so 
goes  the  wisdom  of  God  ! 


LITTLE  FOXES 


FAULT-FINDING 

"  PAPA,  what  are  you  going  to  give  us  this  winter  for  our 
evening  readings  ?  "  said  Jenny. 

"  I  am  thinking,  for  one  thing,"  I  replied,  "  of  preach 
ing  a  course  of  household  sermons  from  a  very  odd  text  pre 
fixed  to  a  discourse  which  I  found  at  the  bottom  of  the 
pamphlet-barrel  in  the  garret." 

"  Don't  say  sermon,  papa,  —  it  has  such  a  dreadful  sound  ; 
and  on  winter  evenings  one  wants  something  entertaining." 

"  Well,  treatise,  then,"  said  I,  "  or  discourse,  or  essay, 
or  prelection  ;  I  'm  not  particular  as  to  words." 

"  But  what  is  the  queer  text  that  you  found  at  the  bot 
tom  of  the  pamphlet-barrel  ?  " 

"  It  was  one  preached  upon  by  your  mother's  great-great 
grandfather,  the  very  savory  and  much-respected  Simeon 
Shuttleworth,  '  on  the  occasion  of  the  melancholy  defections 
and  divisions  among  the  godly  in  the  town  of  West  Dofield  ; ' 
and  it  runs  thus :  '  Take  us  the  foxes,  the  little  foxes,  that 
spoil  the  vines:  for  our  vines  have  tender  grapes.' ': 

"  It  is  a  curious  text  enough ;  but  I  can't  imagine  what 
you  are  going  to  make  of  it." 

"  Simply  an  essay  on  Little  Foxes,"  said  I,  "  by  which 
I  mean  those  unsuspected,  unwatched,  insignificant  little 
causes,  that  nibble  away  domestic  happiness,  and  make  home 
less  than  so  noble  an  institution  should  be. 

"  You  may  build  beautiful,  convenient,  attractive  houses, 


322  LITTLE   FOXES 

—  you  may  hang  the  walls  with  lovely  pictures  and  stud 
them  with  gems  of  Art ;  and  there  may  be  living  there  to 
gether  persons  bound  by  blood  and  affection  in  one  common 
interest,  leading  a  life  common  to  themselves  and  apart  from 
others  ;  and  these  persons  may  each  one  of  them  be  pos 
sessed  of  good  and  noble  traits ;  there  may  be  a  common 
basis  of  affection,  of  generosity,  of  good  principle,  of  re 
ligion  ;  and  yet,  through  the  influence  of  some  of  these  per 
verse,  nibbling,  insignificant  little  foxes,  half  the  clusters 
of  happiness  on  these  so  promising  vines  may  fail  to  come 
to  maturity.  A  little  community  of  people,  all  of  whom 
would  be  willing  to  die  for  each  other,  may  not  be  able  to 
live  happily  together  ;  that  is,  they  may  have  far  less  hap 
piness  than  their  circumstances,  their  fine  and  excellent 
traits,  entitle  them  to  expect. 

"  The  reason  for  this  in  general  is  that  home  is  a  place 
not  only  of  strong  affections,  but  of  entire  unreserves  ;  it  is 
life's  undress  rehearsal,  its  back-room,  its  dressing-room,  from 
which  we  go  forth  to  more  careful  and  guarded  intercourse, 
leaving  behind  us  much  debris  of  cast-off  and  every-day 
clothing.  Hence  has  arisen  the  common  proverb,  <  No  man 
is  a  hero  to  his  valet-de-chambre  ;  '  and  the  common  warn 
ing,  i  If  you  wish  to  keep  your  friend,  don't  go  and  live 
with  him.7  " 

"  Which  is  only  another  way  of  saying,7'  said  my  wife, 
"  that  we  are  all  human  and  imperfect ;  and  the  nearer  you 
get  to  any  human  being,  the  more  defects  you  see.  The 
characters  that  can  stand  the  test  of  daily  intimacy  are 
about  as  numerous  as  four-leaved  clovers  in  the  meadow ;  in 
general  those  who  do  not  annoy  you  with  positive  faults 
bore  you  with  their  insipidity.  The  evenness  and  beauty 
of  a  strong,  well-defined  nature,  perfectly  governed  and  bal 
anced,  is  about  the  last  thing  one  is  likely  to  meet  with  in 
one's  researches  into  life." 

"But  what  I  have  to  say,"  replied  I,  "is  this,  —  that, 


FAULT-FINDING  323 

family  life  being  a  state  of  unreserve,  a  state  in  which  there 
are  few  of  those  barriers  and  veils  that  keep  people  in  the 
world  from  seeing  each  other's  defects  and  mutually  jar 
ring  and  grating  upon  each  other,  it  is  remarkable  that  it  is 
entered  upon  and  maintained  generally  with  less  reflection, 
less  care  and  forethought,  than  pertain  to  most  kinds  of 
business  which  men  and  women  set  their  hands  to.  A  man 
does  not  undertake  to  run  an  engine  or  manage  a  piece  of 
machinery  without  some  careful  examination  of  its  parts 
and  capabilities,  and  some  inquiry  whether  he  have  the  ne 
cessary  knowledge,  skill,  and  strength  to  make  it  do  itself 
and  him  justice.  A  man  does  not  try  to  play  on  the  violin 
without  seeing  if  his  fingers  are  long  and  flexible  enough  to 
bring  out  the  harmonies  and  raise  his  performance  above 
the  grade  of  dismal  scraping  to  that  of  divine  music.  What 
should  we  think  of  a  man  who  should  set  a  whole  orchestra 
of  instruments  upon  playing  together  without  the  least 
provision  or  forethought  as  to  their  chord,  and  then  howl 
and  tear  his  hair  at  the  result  ?  It  is  not  the  fault  of 
the  instruments  that  they  grate  harsh  thunders  together  ; 
they  may  each  be  noble  and  of  celestial  temper  ;  but  united 
without  regard  to  their  nature,  dire  confusion  is  the  result. 
Still  worse  were  it,  if  a  man  were  supposed  so  stupid  as  to 
expect  of  each  instrument  a  role  opposed  to  its  nature,  — 
if  he  asked  of  the  octave-flute  a  bass  solo,  and  condemned 
the  trombone  because  it  could  not  do  the  work  of  the  many- 
voiced  violin. 

"  Yet  just  so  carelessly  is  the  work  of  forming  a  family 
often  performed.  A  man  and  woman  come  together  from 
some  affinity,  some  partial  accord  of  their  nature  which 
has  inspired  mutual  affection.  There  is  generally  very  lit 
tle  careful  consideration  of  who  and  what  they  are,  —  no 
thought  of  the  reciprocal  influence  of  mutual  traits,  —  no 
previous  chording  and  testing  of  the  instruments  which  are 
to  make  lifelong  harmony  or  discord,  —  and  after  a  short 


324  LITTLE   FOXES 

period  of  engagement,  in  which  all  their  mutual  relations  are 
made  as  opposite  as  possible  to  those  which  must  follow 
marriage,  these  two  furnish  their  house  and  begin  life  to 
gether. 

"  Then  in  many  cases  the  domestic  roof  is  supposed  at 
once  to  be  the  proper  refuge  for  relations  and  friends  on 
both  sides,  who  also  are  introduced  into  the  interior  concert 
without  any  special  consideration  of  what  is  likely  to  be  the 
operation  of  character  on  character,  the  play  of  instrument 
with  instrument ;  —  then  follow  children,  each  of  whom  is  a 
separate  entity,  a  separate  will,  a  separate  force  in  the  cir 
cle  ;  and  thus,  with  the  lesser  powers  of  servants  and  de 
pendants,  family  is  made  up.  And  there  is  no  wonder  if  all 
these  chance-assorted  instruments,  playing  together,  some 
times  make  quite  as  much  discord  as  harmony.  For  if  the 
husband  and  wife  chord,  the  wife's  sister  or  husband's  mo 
ther  may  introduce  a  discord  ;  and  then  again,  each  child 
of  marked  character  introduces  another  possibility  of  confu 
sion. 

"  The  conservative  forces  of  human  nature  are  so  strong 
and  so  various,  that  with  all  these  drawbacks  the  family 
state  is  after  all  the  best  and  purest  happiness  that  earth 
affords.  But  then,  with  cultivation  and  care,  it  might  be 
a  great  deal  happier.  Very  fair  pears  have  been  raised  by 
dropping  a  seed  into  a  good  soil  and  letting  it  alone  for 
years;  but  finer  and  choicer  are  raised  by  the  watchings, 
tendings,  prunings  of  the  gardener.  Wild  grapevines  bore 
very  fine  grapes,  and  an  abundance  of  them,  before  our  friend 
Dr.  Grant  took  up  his  abode  at  lona,  and,  studying  the  laws 
of  Nature,  conjured  up  new  species  of  rarer  fruit  and  flavor 
out  of  the  old.  And  so,  if  all  the  little  foxes  that  infest  our 
domestic  vine  and  fig-tree  were  once  hunted  out  and  killed, 
we  might  have  fairer  clusters  and  fruit  all  winter." 

"  But,  papa,"  said  Jenny,  "  to  come  to  the  foxes  ;  let  ?s 
know  what  they  are." 


FAULT-FINDING  325 

"Well,  as  the  text  says,  little  foxes,  the  pet  foxes  of 
good  people,  unsuspected  little  animals,  —  on  the  whole, 
often  thought  to  be  really  creditable  little  beasts,  that  may 
do  good,  and  at  all  events  cannot  do  much  harm.  And  as 
I  have  taken  the  Puritanic  order  in  my  discourse,  I  shall 
set  them  in  sevens,  as  Noah  did  his  clean  beasts  in  the 
ark.  Now  my  seven  little  foxes  are  these :  Fault-Finding, 
Intolerance,  Reticence,  Irritability,  Exactingness,  Discour 
tesy,  Self- Will.  And  here,'7  turning  to  my  sermon,  "is 
what  I  have  to  say  about  the  first  of  them : "  — 

FAULT-FINDING, 

a  most  respectable  little  animal,  that  many  people  let  run 
freely  among  their  domestic  vines,  under  the  notion  that  he 
helps  the  growth  of  the  grapes,  and  is  the  principal  means 
of  keeping  them  in  order. 

Now  it  may  safely  be  set  down  as  a  maxim,  that  no 
body  likes  to  be  found  fault  with,  but  everybody  likes  to 
find  fault  when  things  do  not  suit  him.  Let  my  courteous 
reader  ask  him  or  herself  if  he  or  she  does  not  experience 
a  relief  and  pleasure  in  finding  fault  with  or  about  whatever 
troubles  them. 

This  appears  at  first  sight  an  anomaly  in  the  provisions 
of  Nature.  Generally  we  are  so  constituted  that  what  it 
is  a  pleasure  to  us  to  do  it  is  a  pleasure  to  our  neighbor 
to  have  us  do.  It  is  a  pleasure  to  give,  and  a  pleasure 
to  receive.  It  is  a  pleasure  to  love,  and  a  pleasure  to  be 
loved  ;  a  pleasure  to  admire,  a  pleasure  to  be  admired.  It 
is  a  pleasure,  also,  to  find  fault,  but  not  a  pleasure  to  be 
found  fault  with.  Furthermore,  those  people  whose  sen 
sitiveness  of  temperament  leads  them  to  find  the  most  fault 
are  precisely  those  who  can  least  bear  to  be  found  fault 
with  ;  they  bind  heavy  burdens  and  grievous  to  be  borne, 
and  lay  them  on  other  men's  shoulders,  but  they  them 
selves  cannot  bear  the  weight  of  a  finger. 


326  LITTLE   FOXES 

Now  the  difficulty  in  the  case  is  this  :  There  are  things 
in  life  that  need  to  be  altered ;  and  that  things  may  be 
altered,  they  must  be  spoken  of  to  the  people  whose  busi 
ness  it  is  to  make  the  change.  This  opens  wide  the  door  of 
fault-finding  to  well-disposed  people,  and  gives  them  lati 
tude  of  conscience  to  impose  on  their  fellows  all  the  annoy 
ances  which  they  themselves  feel.  The  father  and  mother 
of  a  family  are  fault-finders,  ex  officio  ;  and  to  them  flows 
back  the  tide  of  every  separate  individual's  complaints  in 
the  domestic  circle,  till  often  the  whole  air  of  the  house  is 
chilled  and  darkened  by  a  drizzling  Scotch  mist  of  queru- 
lousness.  Very  bad  are  these  mists  for  grapevines,  and 
produce  mildew  in  many  a  fair  cluster. 

Enthusius  falls  in  love  with  Hermione,  because  she  looks 
like  a  moonbeam,  —  because  she  is  ethereal  as  a  summer 
cloud,  spirituelle.  He  commences  forthwith  the  perpetual 
adoration  system  that  precedes  marriage.  He  assures  her 
that  she  is  too  good  for  this  world,  too  delicate  and  fair  for 
any  of  the  uses  of  poor  mortality,  —  that  she  ought  to  tread 
on  roses,  sleep  on  the  clouds,  —  that  she  ought  never  to  shed 
a  tear,  know  a  fatigue,  or  make  an  exertion,  but  live  apart 
in  some  bright,  ethereal  sphere  worthy  of  her  charms.  All 
which  is  duly  chanted  in  her  ear  in  moonlight  walks  or 
sails,  and  so  often  repeated  that  a  sensible  girl  may  be  ex 
cused  for  believing  that  a  little  of  it  may  be  true. 

Now  comes  marriage,  —  and  it  turns  out  that  Enthusius 
is  very  particular  as  to  his  coffee,  that  he  is  excessively  dis 
turbed  if  his  meals  are  at  all  irregular,  and  that  he  cannot 
be  comfortable  with  any  table  arrangements  which  do  not 
resemble  those  of  his  notable  mother,  lately  deceased  in  the 
odor  of  sanctity  ;  he  also  wants  his  house  in  perfect  order 
at  all  hours.  Still  he  does  not  propose  to  provide  a  trained 
housekeeper ;  it  is  all  to  be  effected  by  means  of  certain  raw 
Irish  girls,  under  the  superintendence  of  this  angel  who  was 
to  tread  on  roses,  sleep  on  clouds,  and  never  know  an  earthly 


FAULT-FINDING  327 

care.  Neither  has  Enthusius  ever  considered  it  a  part  of  a 
husband's  duty  to  bear  personal  inconveniences  in  silence. 
He  would  freely  shed  his  blood  for  Hermione,  —  nay,  has 
often  frantically  proposed  the  same  in  the  hours  of  court 
ship,  when  of  course  nobody  wanted  it  done,  and  it  could 
answer  no  manner  of  use ;  but  now  to  the  idyllic  dialogues 
of  that  period  succeed  such  as  these  :  — 

"  My  dear,  this  tea  is  smoked :  can't  you  get  Jane  into 
the  way  of  making  it  better  ?  " 

"My  dear,  I  have  tried;  but  she  will  not  do  as  I  tell 
her." 

"  Well,  all  I  know  is,  other  people  can  have  good  tea, 
and  I  should  think  we  might." 

And  again  at  dinner  :  — 

"  My  dear,  this  mutton  is  overdone  again ;  it  is  always 
overdone." 

"  Not  always,  dear,  because  you  recollect  on  Monday  you 
said  it  was  just  right." 

"  Well,  almost  always." 

"  Well,  my  dear,  the  reason  to-day  was,  I  had  company 
in  the  parlor,  and  could  not  go  out  to  caution  Bridget,  as  I 
generally  do.  It  7s  very  difficult  to  get  things  done  with 
such  a  girl." 

"  My  mother's  things  were  always  well  done,  no  matter 
what  her  girl  was." 

Again :  "  My  dear,  you  must  speak  to  the  servants  about 
wasting  the  coal.  I  never  saw  such  a  consumption  of  fuel 
in  a  family  of  our  size  ;  "  or,  "  My  dear,  how  can  you  let 
Maggie  tear  the  morning  paper  ?  "  or,  "  My  dear,  I  shall 
actually  have  to  give  up  coming  to  dinner,  if  my  dinners 
cannot  be  regular  "  ;  or,  "  My  dear,  I  wish  you  would  look 
at  the  way  my  shirts  are  ironed,  —  it  is  perfectly  scandal 
ous  ;  "  or,  "  My  dear,  you  must  not  let  Johnnie  finger  the 
mirror  in  the  parlor ; "  or,  "  My  dear,  you  must  stop  the 
children  from  playing  in  the  garret ; "  or,  "  My  dear,  you 


328  LITTLE   FOXES 

must  see  that  Maggie  does  n't  leave  the  mat  out  on  the  rail 
ing  when  she  sweeps  the  front  hall ;  "  and  so  on,  up  stairs 
and  down  stairs,  in  the  lady's  chamber,  in  attic,  garret,  and 
cellar,  "  my  dear  "  is  to  see  that  nothing  goes  wrong,  and 
she  is  found  fault  with  when  anything  does. 

Yet  Enthusius,  when  occasionally  he  finds  his  sometime 
angel  in  tears,  and  she  tells  him  he  does  not  love  her  as  he 
once  did,  repudiates  the  charge  with  all  his  heart,  and  de 
clares  he  loves  her  more  than  ever,  —  and  perhaps  he  does. 
The  only  difficulty  is  that  she  has  passed  out  of  the  plane 
of  moonshine  and  poetry  into  that  of  actualities.  While 
she  was  considered  an  angel,  a  star,  a  bird,  an  evening  cloud, 
of  course  there  was  nothing  to  be  found  fault  with  in  her; 
but  now  that  the  angel  has  become  chief  business-partner 
in  an  earthly  working  firm,  relations  are  different.  Enthu 
sius  could  say  the  same  things  over  again  under  the  same 
circumstances,  but  unfortunately  now  they  never  are  in  the 
same  circumstances.  Enthusius  is  simply  a  man  who  is 
in  the  habit  of  speaking  from  impulse,  and  saying  a  thing 
merely  and  only  because  he  feels  it  at  the  moment.  Before 
marriage  he  worshiped  and  adored  his  wife  as  an  ideal  being 
dwelling  in  the  land  of  dreams  and  poetries,  and  did  his 
very  best  to  make  her  unpractical  and  unfitted  to  enjoy  the 
life  to  which  he  was  to  introduce  her  after  marriage.  After 
marriage  he  still  yields  unreflectingly  to  present  impulses, 
which  are  no  longer  to  praise,  but  to  criticise  and  condemn. 
The  very  sensibility  to  beauty  and  love  of  elegance,  which 
made  him  admire  her  before  marriage,  now  transferred  to 
the  arrangement  of  the  domestic  menage,  lead  him  daily  to 
perceive  a  hundred  defects  and  find  a  hundred  annoyances. 

Thus  far  we  suppose  an  amiable,  submissive  wife,  who  is 
only  grieved,  not  provoked,  —  who  has  no  sense  of  injustice, 
and  meekly  strives  to  make  good  the  hard  conditions  of  her 
lot.  Such  poor,  little,  faded  women  have  we  seen,  looking 
for  all  the  world  like  plants  that  have  been  nursed  and 


FAULT-FINDING  329 

forced  into  bloom  in  the  steam-heat  of  the  conservatory,  and 
are  now  sickly  and  yellow,  dropping  leaf  by  leaf,  in  the  dry, 
dusty  parlor. 

But  there  is  another  side  of  the  picture,  —  where  the 
wife,  provoked  and  indignant,  takes  up  the  fault-finding 
trade  in  return,  and  with  the  keen  arrows  of  her  woman's 
wit  searches  and  penetrates  every  joint  of  the  husband's 
armor,  showing  herself  full  as  unjust  and  far  more  capable 
in  this  sort  of  conflict. 

Saddest  of  all  sad  things  is  it  to  see  two  once  very  dear 
friends  employing  all  that  peculiar  knowledge  of  each  other, 
which  love  had  given  them,  only  to  harass  and  provoke,  — 
thrusting  and  piercing  with  a  certainty  of  aim  that  only 
past  habits  of  confidence  and  affection  could  have  put  in 
their  power,  wounding  their  own  hearts  with  every  deadly 
thrust  they  make  at  one  another,  and  all  for  such  inexpres 
sibly  miserable  trifles  as  usually  form  the  openings  of  fault 
finding  dramas. 

For  the  contentions  that  loosen  the  very  foundations  of 
love,  that  crumble  away  all  its  fine  traceries  and  carved 
work,  about  what  miserable,  worthless  things  do  they  com 
monly  begin  !  —  a  dinner  underdone,  too  much  oil  consumed, 
a  newspaper  torn,  a  waste  of  coal  or  soap,  a  dish  broken  !  — 
and  for  this  miserable  sort  of  trash,  very  good,  very  gener 
ous,  very  religious  people  will  sometimes  waste  and  throw 
away  by  double-handfuls  the  very  thing  for  which  houses  are 
built  and  coal  burned,  and  all  the  paraphernalia  of  a  home 
established,  —  their  happiness.  Better  cold  coffee,  smoky 
tea,  burnt  meat,  better  any  inconvenience,  any  loss,  than  a 
loss  of  love ;  and  nothing  so  surely  burns  away  love  as  con 
stant  fault-finding. 

For  fault-finding  once  allowed  as  a  habit  between  two 
near  and  dear  friends  conies  in  time  to  establish  a  chronic 
soreness,  so  that  the  mildest,  the  most  reasonable  suggestion, 
the  gentlest  implied  reproof,  occasions  burning  irritation ; 


330  LITTLE   FOXES 

and  when  this  morbid  stage  has  once  set  in,  the  restoration 
of  love  seems  well-nigh  impossible. 

For  example  :  Enthusius,  having  risen  this  morning  in 
the  best  of  humors,  in  the  most  playful  tones  begs  Hermione 
not  to  make  the  tails  of  her  g's  quite  so  long ;  and  Her 
mione  fires  up  with  — 

"  And,  pray,  what  else  would  n't  you  wish  me  to  do  ? 
Perhaps  you  would  be  so  good,  when  you  have  leisure,  as  to 
make  out  an  alphabetical  list  of  the  things  in  me  that  need 
correcting." 

"  My  dear,  you  are  unreasonable." 

"  I  don't  think  so.  I  should  like  to  get  to  the  end  of 
the  requirements  of  my  lord  and  master  sometimes." 

"Now,  my  dear,  you  really  are  very  silly." 

"  Please  say  something  original,  my  dear.  I  have  heard 
that  till  it  has  lost  the  charm  of  novelty." 

"  Come  now,  Hermione,  don't  let 's  quarrel." 

"  My  dear  sir,  who  thinks  of  quarreling  ?  Not  I ;  I  'm 
sure  I  was  only  asking  to  be  directed.  I  trust  some  time, 
if  I  live  to  be  ninety,  to  suit  your  fastidious  taste.  I  trust 
the  coffee  is  right  this  morning,  and  the  tea,  and  the  toast, 
and  the  steak,  and  the  servants,  and  the  front-hall  mat, 
and  the  upper-story  hall-door,  and  the  basement  premises ; 
and  now  I  suppose  I  am  to  be  trained  in  respect  to  my 
general  education.  I  shall  set  about  the  tails  of  my  g's  at 
once,  but  trust  you  will  prepare  a  list  of  any  other  little 
things  that  need  emendation." 

Enthusius  pushes  away  his  coffee,  and  drums  on  the 
table. 

"  If  I  might  be  allowed  one  small  criticism,  my  dear,  I 
should  observe  that  it  is  not  good  manners  to  drum  on  the 
table,"  says  his  fair  opposite. 

"  Hermione,  you  are  enough  to  drive  a  man  frantic  ! " 
exclaims  Enthusius,  rushing  out  with  bitterness  in  his  soul, 
and  a  determination  to  take  his  dinner  at  Delmonico's. 


FAULT-FINDING  331 

Enthusius  feels  himself  an  abused  man,  and  thinks  there 
never  was  such  a  sprite  of  a  woman,  —  the  most  utterly 
unreasonable,  provoking  human  being  he  ever  met  with. 
What  he  does  not  think  of  is,  that  it  is  his  own  inconsid 
erate,  constant  fault-finding  that  has  made  every  nerve  so 
sensitive  and  sore,  that  the  mildest  suggestion  of  advice  or 
reproof  on  the  most  indifferent  subject  is  impossible.  He 
has  not,  to  be  sure,  been  the  guilty  partner  in  this  morn 
ing's  encounter  ;  he  has  said  only  what  is  fair  and  proper, 
and  she  has  been  unreasonable  and  cross  ;  but  after  all, 
the  fault  is  remotely  his. 

When  Enthusius  awoke,  after  marriage,  to  find  in  his 
Hermione  in  very  deed  only  a  bird,  a  star,  a  flower,  but  no 
housekeeper,  why  did  he  not  face  the  matter  like  an  honest 
man  ?  Why  did  he  not  remember  all  the  fine  things  about 
dependence  and  uselessness  with  which  he  had  been  filling 
her  head  for  a  year  or  two,  and  in  common  honesty  exact 
no  more  from  her  than  he  had  bargained  for  ?  Can  a  bird 
make  a  good  business-manager  ?  Can  a  flower  oversee  Biddy 
and  Mike,  and  impart  to  their  uncircumcised  ears  the  high 
crafts  and  mysteries  of  elegant  housekeeping  ? 

If  his  little  wife  has  to  learn  her  domestic  role  of  house 
hold  duty,  as  most  girls  do,  by  a  thousand  mortifications,  a 
thousand  perplexities,  a  thousand  failures,  let  him,  in  ordi 
nary  fairness,  make  it  as  easy  to  her  as  possible.  Let  him 
remember  with  what  admiring  smiles,  before  marriage,  he 
received  her  pretty  professions  of  utter  helplessness  and  in 
capacity  in  domestic  matters,  finding  only  poetry  and  grace 
in  what,  after  marriage,  proved  an  annoyance. 

And  if  a  man  finds  that  he  has  a  wife  ill  adapted  to  wifely 
duties,  does  it  follow  that  the  best  thing  he  can  do  is  to 
blurt  out,  without  form  or  ceremony,  all  the  criticisms  and 
corrections  which  may  occur  to  him  in  the  many  details  of 
household  life  ?  He  would  not  dare  to  speak  with  as  little 
preface,  apology,  or  circumlocution  to  his  business-manager, 


332  LITTLE   FOXES 

to  his  butcher,  or  his  baker.  When  Enthusius  was  a  bach 
elor,  he  never  criticised  the  table  at  his  boarding-house 
without  some  reflection,  and  studying  to  take  unto  him 
self  acceptable  words  whereby  to  soften  the  asperity  of  the 
criticism.  The  laws  of  society  require  that  a  man  should 
qualify,  soften,  and  wisely  time  his  admonitions  to  those  he 
meets  in  the  outer  world,  or  they  will  turn  again  and  rend 
him.  But  to  his  own  wife,  in  his  own  house  and  home,  he 
can  find  fault  without  ceremony  or  softening.  So  he  can  ; 
and  he  can  awake,  in  the  course  of  a  year  or  two,  to  find 
his  wife  a  changed  woman,  and  his  home  unendurable.  He 
may  find,  too,  that  unceremonious  fault-finding  is  a  game  that 
two  can  play  at>  and  that  a  woman  can  shoot  her  arrows 
with  far  more  precision  and  skill  than  a  man. 

But  the  fault  lies  not  always  on  the  side  of  the  husband. 
Quite  as  often  is  a  devoted,  patient,  good-tempered  man 
harassed  and  hunted  and  baited  by  the  inconsiderate  fault 
finding  of  a  wife  whose  principal  talent  seems  to  lie  in 
the  ability  at  first  glance  to  discover  and  make  manifest  the 
weak  point  in  everything. 

We  have  seen  the  most  generous,  the  most  warm-hearted 
and  obliging  of  mortals  under  this  sort  of  training  made 
the  most  morose  and  disobliging  of  husbands.  Sure  to  be 
found  fault  with  whatever  they  do,  they  have  at  last  ceased 
doing.  The  disappointment  of  not  pleasing  they  have 
abated  by  not  trying  to  please. 

We  once  knew  a  man  who  married  a  spoiled  beauty, 
whose  murmurs,  exactions,  and  caprices  were  infinite.  He 
had  at  last,  as  a  refuge  to  his  wearied  nerves,  settled  down 
into  a  habit  of  utter  disregard  and  neglect ;  he  treated  her 
wishes  and  her  complaints  with  equal  indifference,  and  went 
on  with  his  life  as  nearly  as  possible  as  if  she  did  not  exist. 
He  silently  provided  for  her  what  he  thought  proper,  with 
out  troubling  himself  to  notice  her  requests  or  listen  to  her 
grievances.  Sickness  came,  but  the  heart  of  her  husband 


FAULT-FINDING  333 

was  cold  and  gone ;  there  was  no  sympathy  left  to  warm 
her.  Death  came,  and  he  breathed  freely  as  a  man  released. 
He  married  again,  —  a  woman  with  no  beauty,  but  much 
love  and  goodness,  —  a  woman  who  asked  little,  blamed 
seldom,  and  then  with  all  the  tact  and  address  which  the 
utmost  thoughtfulness  could  devise  5  and  the  passive,  negli 
gent  husband  became  the  attentive,  devoted  slave  of  her 
will.  He  was  in  her  hands  as  clay  in  the  hands  of  the 
potter ;  the  least  breath  or  suggestion  of  criticism  from  her 
lips,  who  criticised  so  little  and  so  thoughtfully,  weighed 
more  with  him  than  many  outspoken  words.  So  different 
is  the  same  human  being,  according  to  the  touch  of  the 
hand  which  plays  upon  him ! 

I  have  spoken  hitherto  of  fault-finding  as  between  hus 
band  and  wife  :  its  consequences  are  even  worse  as  respects 
children.  The  habit  once  suffered  to  grow  up  between  the  two 
that  constitute  the  head  of  the  family  descends  and  runs 
through  all  the  branches.  Children  are  more  hurt  by  in 
discriminate,  thoughtless  fault-finding  than  by  any  other 
one  thing.  Often  a  child  has  all  the  sensitiveness  and  all 
the  susceptibility  of  a  grown  person,  added  to  the  faults  of 
childhood.  Nothing  about  him  is  right  as  yet ;  he  is  im 
mature  and  faulty  at  all  points,  and  everybody  feels  at  per 
fect  liberty  to  criticise  him  to  right  and  left,  above,  below, 
and  around,  till  he  takes  refuge  either  in  callous  hardness 
or  irritable  moroseness. 

A  bright,  noisy  boy  rushes  in  from  school,  eager  to  tell 
his  mother  something  he  has  on  his  heart, -and  Number  One 
cries  out,  —  "Oh,  you've  left  the  door  open  !  I  do  wish 
you  would  n't  always  leave  the  door  open  !  And  do  look 
at  the  mud  on  your  shoes  !  How  many  times  must  I  tell 
you  to  wipe  your  feet  ?  " 

"  Now  there  you  've  thrown  your  cap  on  the  sofa  again. 
When  will  you  learn  to  hang  it  up  ?  " 

"  Don't  put  your  slate  there  j  that  is  n't  the  place  for  it." 


334  LITTLE  FOXES 

"  How  dirty  your  hands  are  !  what  have  you  been  do 
ing  ?  » 

"  Don't  sit  in  that  chair ;  you  break  the  springs,  joun 
cing." 

"  Child,  how  your  hair  looks !  Do  go  upstairs  and  comb 
it." 

"  There,  if  you  have  n't  torn  the  braid  all  off  your  coat ! 
Dear  me,  what  a  boy !  " 

"  Don't  speak  so  loud ;  your  voice  goes  through  my 
head." 

"  I  want  to  know,  Jim,  if  it  was  you  that  broke  up  that 
barrel  that  I  have  been  saving  for  brown  flour." 

"  I  believe  it  was  you,  Jim,  that  hacked  the  edge  of  my 
razor." 

"  Jim 's  been  writing  at  my  desk,  and  blotted  three  sheets 
of  the  best  paper." 

Now  the  question  is,  if  any  of  the  grown  people  of  the 
family  had  to  run  the  gauntlet  of  a  string  of  criticisms  on 
themselves  equally  true  as  those  that  salute  unlucky  Jim, 
would  they  be  any  better  natured  about  it  than  he  is  ? 

No  ;  but  they  are  grown-up  people ;  they  have  rights 
that  others  are  bound  to  respect.  Everybody  cannot  tell 
them  exactly  what  he  thinks  about  everything  they  do.  If 
every  one  could  and  did,  would  there  not  be  terrible  reac 
tions  ? 

Servants  in  general  are  only  grown-up  children,  and  the 
same  considerations  apply  to  them.  A  raw,  untrained  Irish 
girl  introduced  into  an  elegant  house  has  her  head  bewildered 
in  every  direction.  There  are  the  gas-pipes,  the  water-pipes, 
the  whole  paraphernalia  of  elegant  and  delicate  conven 
iences,  about  which  a  thousand  little  details  are  to  be  learned, 
the  neglect  of  any  one  of  which  may  flood  the  house,  or 
poison  it  with  foul  air,  or  bring  innumerable  inconveniences. 
The  setting  of  a  genteel  table  and  the  waiting  upon  it  in 
volve  fifty  possibilities  of  mistake,  each  one  of  which  will 


FAULT-FINDING  335 

grate  on  the  nerves  of  a  whole  family.  There  is  no  wonder, 
then,  that  the  occasions  of  fault-finding  in  families  are  so 
constant  and  harassing ;  and  there  is  no  wonder  that  mis 
tress  and  maid  often  meet  each  other  on  the  terms  of  the 
bear  and  the  man  who  fell  together  fifty  feet  down  from 
the  limb  of  a  high  tree,  and  lay  at  the  bottom  of  it,  looking 
each  other  in  the  face  in  helpless,  growling  despair.  The 
mistress  is  rasped,  irritated,  despairing,  and  with  good  rea 
son  :  the  maid  is  the  same,  and  with  equally  good  reason. 
Yet  let  the  mistress  be  suddenly  introduced  into  a  printing- 
office,  and  required,  with  what  little  teaching  could  be  given 
her  in  a  few  rapid  directions,  to  set  up  the  editorial  of  a 
morning  paper,  and  it  is  probable  she  would  be  as  stu 
pid  and  bewildered  as  Biddy  in  her  beautifully  arranged 
house. 

There  are  elegant  houses  which,  from  causes  like  these, 
are  ever  vexed  like  the  troubled  sea  that  cannot  rest.  Lit 
erally,  their  table  has  become  a  snare  before  them,  and  that 
which  should  have  been  for  their  welfare  a  trap.  Their  gas 
and  their  water  and  their  fire  and  their  elegances  and  orna 
ments,  all  in  unskilled,  blundering  hands,  seem  only  so 
many  guns  in  the  hands  of  Satan,  through  which  he  fires  at 
their  Christian  graces  day  and  night,  —  so  that,  if  their 
house  is  kept  in  order,  their  temper  and  religion  are  not. 

I  am  speaking  now  to  the  consciousness  of  thousands  of 
women  who  are  in  will  and  purpose  real  saints.  Their  souls 
go  up  to  heaven,  —  its  love,  its  purity,  its  rest,  —  with 
every  hymn  and  prayer  and  sacrament  in  church  ;  and  they 
come  home  to  be  mortified,  disgraced,  and  made  to  despise 
themselves,  for  the  unlovely  tempers,  the  hasty  words,  the 
cross  looks,  the  universal  nervous  irritability,  that  result 
from  this  constant  jarring  of  finely  toned  chords  under 
unskilled  hands. 

Talk  of  haircloth  shirts,  and  scourgings,  and  sleeping  on 
ashes,  as  means  of  saintship !  there  is  no  need  of  them  in 


336  LITTLE  FOXES 

our  country.  Let  a  woman  once  look  at  her  domestic  trials 
as  her  haircloth,  her  ashes,  her  scourges,  —  accept  them,  — 
rejoice  in  them,  —  smile  and  he  quiet,  silent,  patient,  and 
loving  under  them,  —  and  the  convent  can  teach  her  no 
more ;  she  is  a  victorious  saint. 

When  the  damper  of  the  furnace  is  turned  the  wrong 
way  hy  Paddy,  after  the  five  hundredth  time  of  explanation, 
and  the  whole  family  awakes  coughing,  sneezing,  strangling, 
—  when  the  gas  is  blown  out  in  the  nursery  hy  Biddy,  who 
has  been  instructed  every  day  for  weeks  in  the  danger  of 
such  a  proceeding,  —  when  the  tumblers  on  the  dinner-table 
are  found  dim  and  streaked,  after  weeks  of  training  in  the 
simple  business  of  washing  and  wiping,  —  when  the  ivory- 
handled  knives  and  forks  are  left  soaking  in  hot  dish-water, 
after  incessant  explanations  of  the  consequences,  —  when 
four  or  five  half-civilized  beings,  above,  below,  and  all  over 
the  house,  are  constantly  forgetting  the  most  important 
things  at  the  very  moment  it  is  most  necessary  they  should 
remember  them,  —  there  is  no  hope  for  the  mistress  morally, 
unless  she  can  in  very  deed  and  truth  accept  her  trials 
religiously,  and  conquer  by  accepting.  It  is  not  apostles 
alone  who  can  take  pleasure  in  necessities  and  distresses, 
but  mothers  and  housewives  also,  if  they  would  learn  of 
the  Apostle,  might  say,  "When  I  am  weak,  then  am  I 
strong." 

The  burden  ceases  to  gall  when  we  have  learned  how  to 
carry  it.  We  can  suffer  patiently,  if  we  see  any  good  come 
of  it,  and  say,  as  an  old  black  woman  of  our  acquaintance 
did  of  an  event  that  crossed  her  purpose,  "  Well,  Lord,  if 
it  'a  you,  send  it  along." 

But  that  this  may  be  done,  that  home  life,  in  our  unset 
tled,  changing  state  of  society,  may  become  peaceful  and 
restful,  there  is  one  Christian  grace,  much  treated  of  by 
mystic  writers,  that  must  return  to  its  honor  in  the  Christian 
Church.  I  mean,  —  THE  GRACE  OF  SILENCE.  No  words 


FAULT-FINDING  337 

can  express,  no  tongue  can  tell,  the  value  of  NOT  SPEAKING. 
"  Speech  is  silvern,  but  silence  is  golden,"  is  an  old  and 
very  precious  proverb. 

"  But,"  say  many  voices,  "  what  is  to  become  of  us,  if 
we  may  not  speak  ?  Must  we  not  correct  our  children  and 
our  servants  and  each  other  ?  Must  we  let  people  go  on 
doing  wrong  to  the  end  of  the  chapter  ?  " 

]STo ;  fault  must  be  found  ;  faults  must  be  told,  errors 
corrected.  Reproof  and  admonition  are  duties  of  house 
holders  to  their  families,  and  of  all  true  friends  to  one 
another. 

But,  gentle  reader,  let  us  look  over  life,  our  own  lives 
and  the  lives  of  others,  and  ask,  How  much  of  the  fault 
finding  which  prevails  has  the  least  tendency  to  do  any 
good  ?  How  much  of  it  is  well-timed,  well-pointed,  delib 
erate,  and  just,  so  spoken  as  to  be  effective  ? 

"  A  wise  reprover  upon  an  obedient  ear  "  is  one  of  the 
rare  things  spoken  of  by  Solomon,  —  the  rarest,  perhaps,  to 
be  met  with.  How  many  really  religious  people  put  any  of 
their  religion  into  their  manner  of  performing  this  most 
difficult  office  ?  We  find  fault  with  a  stove  or  furnace 
which  creates  heat  only  to  go  up  chimney  and  not  warm  the 
house.  We  say  it  is  wasteful.  Just  so  wasteful  often 
seem  prayer-meetings,  church  services,  and  sacraments  ;  they 
create  and  excite  lovely,  gentle,  holy  feelings,  —  but  if 
these  do  not  pass  out  into  the  atmosphere  of  daily  life,  and 
warm  and  clear  the  air  of  our  homes,  there  is  a  great  waste 
in  our  religion. 

We  have  been  on  our  knees,  confessing  humbly  that  we 
are  as  awkward  in  heavenly  things,  as  unfit  for  the  Heavenly 
Jerusalem,  as  Biddy  and  Mike,  and  the  little  beggar-girl  on 
our  doorsteps,  are  for  our  parlors.  We  have  deplored  our 
errors  daily,  hourly,  and  confessed  that  "  the  remembrance 
of  them  is  grievous  unto  us,  the  burden  of  them  is  intoler 
able,"  and  then  we  draw  near  in  the  sacrament  to  that  In- 


338  LITTLE   FOXES 

carnate  Divinity  whose  infinite  love  covers  all  our  imperfec 
tions  with  the  mantle  of  His  perfections.  But  when  we 
return,  do  we  take  our  servants  and  children  by  the  throat 
because  they  are  as  untrained  and  awkward  and  careless  in 
earthly  things  as  we  have  been  in  heavenly  ?  Does  no 
remembrance  of  Christ's  infinite  patience  temper  our  impa 
tience,  when  we  have  spoken  seventy  times  seven,  and  our 
words  have  been  disregarded  ?  There  is  no  mistake  as  to 
the  sincerity  of  the  religion  which  the  Church  excites. 
What  we  want  is  to  have  it  used  in  common  life,  instead  of 
going  up  like  hot  air  in  a  fireplace  to  lose  itself  in  the  infi 
nite  abysses  above. 

In  reproving  and  fault-finding,  we  have  beautiful  exam 
ples  in  Holy  Writ.  When  Saint  Paul  has  a  reproof  to  ad 
minister  to  delinquent  Christians,  how  does  he  temper  it 
with  gentleness  and  praise  !  how  does  he  first  make  honora 
ble  note  of  all  the  good  there  is  to  be  spoken  of !  how  does 
he  give  assurance  of  his  prayers  and  love !  —  and  when  at 
last  the  arrow  flies,  it  goes  all  the  straighter  to  the  mark  for 
this  carefulness. 

But  there  was  a  greater,  a  purer,  a  lovelier  than  Paul, 
who  made  His  home  on  earth  with  twelve  plain  men,  igno 
rant,  prejudiced,  slow  to  learn,  —  and  who  to  the  very  day 
of  His  death  were  still  contending  on  a  point  which  He  had 
repeatedly  explained,  and  troubling  His  last  earthly  hours 
with  the  old  contest,  "Who  should  be  greatest."  When 
all  else  failed,  on  His  knees  before  them  as  their  servant, 
tenderly  performing  for  love  the  office  of  a  slave,  He  said, 
"If  I,  your  Lord  and  Master,  have  washed  your  feet  ye  also 
ought  to  wash  one  another's  feet." 

When  parents,  employers,  and  masters  learn  to  reprove 
in  this  spirit,  reproofs  will  be  more  effective  than  they  now 
are.  It  was  by  the  exercise  of  this  spirit  that  Fenelon 
transformed  the  proud,  petulant,  irritable,  selfish  Duke  of 
Burgundy,  making  him  humble,  gentle,  tolerant  of  others, 


FAULT-FINDING  339 

and  severe  only  to  himself:  it  was  he  who  had  for  his 
motto  that  " Perfection  alone  can  bear  with  imperfection.'7 

But  apart  from  the  fault-finding  which  has  a  definite  aim, 
how  much  is  there  that  does  not  profess  or  intend  or  try  to 
do  anything  more  than  give  vent  to  an  irritated  state  of 
feeling  !  The  nettle  stings  us,  and  we  toss  it  with  both 
hands  at  our  neighbor  ;  the  fire  burns  us,  and  we  throw 
coals  and  hot  ashes  at  all  and  sundry  of  those  about  us. 

There  is  fretfulness,  a  mizzling,  drizzling  rain  of  discom 
forting  remark ;  there  is  grumbling,  a  northeast  storm  that 
never  clears ;  there  is  scolding,  the  thunderstorm  with 
lightning  and  hail.  All  these  are  worse  than  useless  ;  they 
are  positive  sins,  by  whomsoever  indulged,  —  sins  as  great 
and  real  as  many  that  are  shuddered  at  in  polite  society. 
All  these  are  for  the  most  part  but  the  venting  on  our 
fellow  beings  of  morbid  feelings  resulting  from  dyspepsia, 
overtaxed  nerves,  or  general  ill  health. 

A  minister  eats  too  much  mince-pie,  goes  to  his  weekly 
lecture,  and  seeing  only  half  a  dozen  people  there,  proceeds 
to  grumble  at  those  half  dozen  for  the  sins  of  such  as  stay 
away.  "  The  Church  is  cold,  there  is  no  interest  in  re 
ligion,"  and  so  on  :  a  simple  outpouring  of  the  blues. 

You  and  I  do  in  one  week  the  work  we  ought  to  do  in 
six ;  we  overtax  nerve  and  brain,  and  then  have  weeks  of 
darkness  in  which  everything  at  home  seems  running  to  de 
struction.  The  servants  never  were  so  careless,  the  children 
never  so  noisy,  the  house  never  so  disorderly,  the  State 
never  so  ill-governed,  the  Church  evidently  going  over  to 
Antichrist.  The  only  thing,  after  all,  in  which  the  exist 
ing  condition  of  affairs  differs  from  that  of  a  week  ago  is, 
that  we  have  used  up  our  nervous  energy,  and  are  looking 
at  the  world  through  blue  spectacles.  We  ought  to  resist 
the  devil  of  fault-finding  at  this  point,  and  cultivate  silence 
as  a  grace  till  our  nerves  are  rested.  There  are  times  when 
no  one  should  trust  himself  to  judge  his  neighbors,  or  re- 


340  LITTLE   FOXES 

prove  his  children  and  servants,  or  find  fault  with  his 
friends,  —  for  he  is  so  sharp-set  that  he  cannot  strike  a 
note  without  striking  too  hard.  Then  is  the  time  to  try 
the  grace  of  silence,  and,  what  is  better  than  silence,  the 
power  of  prayer. 

But  it  being  premised  that  we  are  never  to  fret,  never  to 
grumble,  never  to  scold,  and  yet  it  being  our  duty  in  some 
way  to  make  known  and  get  rectified  the  faults  of  others, 
it  remains  to  ask  how  ;  and  on  this  head  we  will  impro 
vise  a  parable  of  two  women. 

Mrs.  Standfast  is  a  woman  of  high  tone,  and  possessed  of 
a  power  of  moral  principle  that  impresses  one  even  as  sub 
lime.  All  her  perceptions  of  right  and  wrong  are  clear, 
exact,  and  minute  ;  she  is  charitable  to  the  poor,  kind  to 
the  sick  and  suffering,  and  devoutly  and  earnestly  religious. 
In  all  the  minutiae  of  woman's  life  she  manifests  an  incon 
ceivable  precision  and  perfection.  Everything  she  does  is 
perfectly  done.  She  is  true  to  all  her  promises  to  the  very 
letter,  and  so  punctual  that  railroad  time  might  be  kept  by 
her  instead  of  a  chronometer. 

Yet,  with  all  these  excellent  traits,  Mrs.  Standfast  has 
not  the  faculty  of  making  a  happy  home.  She  is  that  most 
hopeless  of  fault-finders,  —  a  fault-finder  from  principle. 
She  has  a  high,  correct  standard  for  everything  in  the 
world,  from  the  regulation  of  the  thoughts  down  to  the 
spreading  of  a  sheet  or  the  hemming  of  a  towel ;  and  to 
this  exact  standard  she  feels  it  her  duty  to  bring  every  one 
in  her  household.  She  does  not  often  scold,  she  is  not  act 
ually  fretful,  but  she  exercises  over  her  household  a  calm, 
inflexible  severity,  rebuking  every  fault ;  she  overlooks 
nothing,  she  excuses  nothing,  she  will  accept  of  nothing  in 
any  part  of  her  domain  but  absolute  perfection ;  and  her  re 
proofs  are  aimed  with  a  true  and  steady  point,  and  sent  with 
a  force  that  makes  them  felt  by  the  most  obdurate. 

Hence,  though  she  is  rarely  seen  out  of  temper,  and  sel- 


FAULT-FINDING  341 

dom  or  never  scolds,  yet  she  drives  every  one  around  her 
to  despair  by  the  use  of  the  calmest  and  most  elegant  Eng 
lish.  Her  servants  fear,  but  do  not  love  her.  Her  hus 
band,  an  impulsive,  generous  man,  somewhat  inconsiderate 
and  careless  in  his  habits,  is  at  times  perfectly  desperate 
under  the  accumulated  load  of  her  disapprobation.  Her 
children  regard  her  as  inhabiting  some  high,  distant,  unap 
proachable  mountain-top  of  goodness,  whence  she  is  always 
looking  down  with  reproving  eyes  on  naughty  boys  and 
girls.  They  wonder  how  it  is  that  so  excellent  a  mamma 
should  have  children  who,  let  them  try  to  be  good  as  hard 
as  they  can,  are  always  sure  to  do  something  dreadful  every 
day. 

The  trouble  with  Mrs.  Standfast  is,  not  that  she  has  a 
high  standard,  and  not  that  she  purposes  and  means  to  bring 
every  one  up  to  it,  but  that  she  does  not  take  the  right 
way.  She  has  set  it  down  in  her  mind  that  to  blame  a 
wrong-doer  is  the  only  way  to  cure  wrong.  She  has  never 
learned  that  it  is  as  much  her  duty  to  praise  as  to  blame, 
and  that  people  are  drawn  to  do  right  by  being  praised 
when  they  do  it,  rather  than  driven  by  being  blamed  when 
they  do  not. 

Eight  across  the  way  from  Mrs.  Standfast  is  Mrs.  Easy, 
a  pretty  little  creature,  with  not  a  tithe  of  her  moral  worth, 
—  a  merry,  pleasure-loving  woman,  of  no  particular  force 
of  principle,  whose  great  object  in  life  is  to  avoid  its  disa 
greeables  and  to  secure  its  pleasures. 

Little  Mrs.  Easy  is  adored  by  her  husband,  her  chil 
dren,  her  servants,  merely  because  it  is  her  nature  to  say 
pleasant  things  to  every  one.  It  is  a  mere  tact  of  pleasing, 
which  she  uses  without  knowing  it.  While  Mrs.  Standfast, 
surveying  her  well-set  dining-table,  runs  her  keen  eye  over 
everything,  and  at  last  brings  up  with,  "  Jane,  look  at  that 
black  spot  on  the  salt-spoon  !  I  am  astonished  at  your 
carelessness  !  "  —  Mrs.  Easy  would  say,  "  Why,  Jane, 


342  LITTLE   FOXES 

where  did  you  learn  to  set  a  table  so  nicely  ?  All  looking 
beautifully,  except,  —  ah!  let's  see, — just  give  a  rub  to 
this  salt-spoon  ;  — now  all  is  quite  perfect."  Mrs.  Stand 
fast's  servants  and  children  hear  only  of  their  failures ; 
these  are  always  before  them  and  her.  Mrs.  Easy's  ser 
vants  hear  of  their  successes.  She  praises  their  good 
points  ;  tells  them  they  are  doing  well  in  this,  that,  and 
the  other  particular;  and  finally  exhorts  them,  on  the 
strength  of  having  done  so  many  things  well,  to  improve  in 
what  is  yet  lacking.  Mrs.  Easy's  husband  feels  that  he  is 
always  a  hero  in  her  eyes,  and  her  children  feel  that  they 
are  dear  good  children,  notwithstanding  Mrs.  Easy  some 
times  has  her  little  tiffs  of  displeasure,  and  scolds  roundly 
when  something  falls  out  as  it  should  not. 

The  two  families  show  how  much  more  may  be  done  by 
a  very  ordinary  woman,  through  the  mere  instinct  of  prais 
ing  and  pleasing,  than  by  the  greatest  worth,  piety,  and 
principle,  seeking  to  lift  human  nature  by  a  lever  that  never 
was  meant  to  lift  it  by. 

The  faults  and  mistakes  of  us  poor  human  beings  are  as 
often  perpetuated  by  despair  as  by  any  other  one  thing. 
Have  we  not  all  been  burdened  by  a  consciousness  of  faults 
that  we  were  slow  to  correct  because  we  felt  discouraged  ? 
Have  we  not  been  sensible  of  a  real  help  sometimes  from 
the  presence  of  a  friend  who  thought  well  of  us,  believed  in 
us,  set  our  virtues  in  the  best  light,  and  put  our  faults  in 
the  background  ? 

Let  us  depend  upon  it,  that  the  flesh  and  blood  that  are 
in  us,  —  the  needs,  the  wants,  the  despondencies,  —  are  in 
each  of  our  fellows,  in  every  awkward  servant  and  careless 
child. 

Finally,  let  us  all  resolve,  — 

First,  to  attain  to  the  grace  of  SILENCE. 

Second,  to  deem  all  FAULT-FINDING  that  does  no  good  a 
SIN  ;  and  to  resolve,  when  we  are  happy  ourselves,  not  to 


FAULT-FINDING  343 

poison  the  atmosphere  for  our  neighbors  by  calling  on  them 
to  remark  every  painful  and  disagreeable  feature  of  their 
daily  life. 

Third,  to  practice  the  grace  and  virtue  of  PRAISE.  We 
have  all  been  taught  that  it  is  our  duty  to  praise  God,  but 
few  of  us  have  reflected  on  our  duty  to  praise  men ;  and 
yet  for  the  same  reason  that  we  should  praise  the  divine 
goodness  it  is  our  duty  to  praise  human  excellence.  We 
should  praise  our  friends,  —  our  near  and  dear  ones  ;  we 
should  look  on  and  think  of  their  virtues  till  their  faults 
fade  away ;  and  when  we  love  most,  and  see  most  to  love, 
then  only  is  the  wise  time  wisely  to  speak  of  what  should 
still  be  altered. 

Parents  should  look  out  for  occasions  to  commend  their 
children,  as  carefully  as  they  seek  to  reprove  their  faults  ; 
and  employers  should  praise  the  good  their  servants  do  as 
strictly  as  they  blame  the  evil. 

Whoever  undertakes  to  use  this  weapon  will  find  that 
praise  goes  farther  in  many  cases  than  blame.  Watch  till 
a  blundering  servant  does  something  well,  and  then  praise 
him  for  it,  and  you  will  see  a  new  fire  lighted  in  the  eye, 
and  often  you  will  find  that  in  that  one  respect  at  least  you 
have  secured  excellence  thenceforth. 

When  you  blame,  which  should  be  seldom,  let  it  be  alone 
with  the  person,  quietly,  considerately,  and  with  all  the 
tact  you  are  possessed  of.  The  fashion  of  reproving  chil 
dren  and  servants  in  the  presence  of  others  cannot  be  too  much 
deprecated.  Pride,  stubbornness,  and  self-will  are  aroused 
by  this,  while  a  more  private  reproof  might  be  received  with 
thankfulness. 

As  a  general  rule,  I  would  say,  treat  children  in  these 
respects  just  as  you  would  grown  people  ;  they  are  grown 
people  in  miniature,  and  need  as  careful  consideration  of 
their  feelings  as  any  of  us. 

Lastly,  let  us  all  make  a  bead-roll,  a  holy  rosary,  of  all  that 


344  LITTLE  FOXES 

is  good  and  agreeable  in  our  position,  our  surroundings,  our 
daily  lot,  of  all  that  is  good  and  agreeable  in  our  friends, 
our  children,  our  servants,  and  charge  ourselves  to  repeat  it 
daily,  till  the  habit  of  our  minds  be  to  praise  and  to  com 
mend  ;  and  so  doing,  we  shall  catch  and  kill  one  Little  Fox 
who  hath  destroyed  many  tender  grapes. 


II 

IRRITABILITY 

IT  was  that  Christmas  Day  that  did  it ;  I  'm  quite  con 
vinced  of  that;  and  the  way  it  was  is  what  I  am  going  to 
tell  you. 

You  see,  among  the  various  family  customs  of  us  Crow- 
fields,  the  observance  of  all  sorts  of  fetes  and  festivals  has 
always  been  a  matter  of  prime  regard  ;  and  among  all  the 
festivals  of  the  round  ripe  year  none  is  so  joyous  and  hon 
ored  among  us  as  Christmas. 

Let  no  one  upon  this  prick  up  the  ears  of  Archaeology, 
and  tell  us  that  by  the  latest  calculations  of  chronologists 
our  ivy-grown  and  holly-mantled  Christmas  is  all  a  hum,  — 
that  it  has  been  demonstrated,  by  all  sorts  of  signs  and  ta 
bles,  that  the  august  event  it  celebrates  did  not  take  place 
on  the  25th  of  December.  Supposing  it  be  so,  what  have 
we  to  do  with  that  ?  If  so  awful,  so  joyous  an  event  ever 
took  place  on  our  earth,  it  is  surely  worth  commemoration. 
It  is  the  event  we  celebrate,  not  the  time.  And  if  all  Chris 
tians  for  eighteen  hundred  years,  while  warring  and  wran 
gling  on  a  thousand  other  points,  have  agreed  to  give  this 
one  25th  of  December  to  peace  and  good-will,  who  is  he 
that  shall  gainsay  them,  and  for  an  historic  scruple  turn  his 
back  on  the  friendly  greetings  of  all  Christendom  ?  Such 
a  man  is  capable  of  rewriting  Milton's  "  Christmas  Hymn  " 
in  the  style  of  Sternhold  and  Hopkins. 

In  our  house,  however,  Christmas  has  always  been  a  high 
day,  a  day  whose  expectation  has  held  waking  all  the  little 
eyes  in  our  bird's  nest,  when  as  yet  there  were  only  little 


346  LITTLE   FOXES 

ones  there,  each  sleeping  with  one  eye  open,  hoping  to  be 
the  happy  first  to  wish  the  Merry  Christmas  and  grasp  the 
wonderful  stocking. 

This  year  our  whole  family  train  of  married  girls  and 
boys,  with  the  various  toddling  tribes  thereto  belonging, 
held  high  festival  around  a  wonderful  Christmas-tree,  the 
getting  up  and  adorning  of  which  had  kept  my  wife  and 
Jenny  and  myself  busy  for  a  week  beforehand.  If  the  lit 
tle  folks  think  these  trees  grow  up  in  a  night,  without  labor, 
they  know  as  little  about  them  as  they  do  about  most  of  the 
other  blessings  which  rain  down  on  their  dear  little  thought 
less  heads.  Such  scrambling  and  clambering  and  fussing 
and  tying  and  untying,  such  alterations  and  rearrangements, 
such  agilities  in  getting  up  and  down  and  everywhere  to  tie 
on  tapers  and  gold  balls  and  glittering  things  innumerable, 
to  hang  airy  dolls  in  graceful  positions,  to  make  branches 
bear  stiffly  up  under  loads  of  pretty  things  which  threaten 
to  make  the  tapers  turn  bottom  upward ! 

Part  and  parcel  of  all  this  was  I,  Christopher,  most  reck 
less  of  rheumatism,  most  careless  of  dignity,  —  the  round, 
bald  top  of  my  head  to  be  seen  emerging  everywhere  from 
the  thick  boughs  of  the  spruce,  now  devising  an  airy  settle 
ment  for  some  gossamer-robed  doll,  now  adjusting  far  back 
on  a  stiff  branch  Tom's  new  little  skates,  now  balancing 
bags  of  sugar-plums  and  candy,  and  now  combating  desper 
ately  with  some  contumacious  taper  that  would  turn  slant 
wise  or  crosswise,  or  anywise  but  upward,  as  a  Christian 
taper  should,  —  regardless  of  Mrs.  Crowfield's  gentle  admo 
nitions  and  suggestions,  sitting  up  to  most  dissipated  hours, 
springing  out  of  bed  suddenly  to  change  some  arrangement 
in  the  middle  of  the  night,  and  up  long  before  the  lazy  sun 
at  dawn  to  execute  still  other  arrangements.  If  that 
Christmas-tree  had  been  a  fort  to  be  taken,  or  a  campaign  to 
be  planned,  I  could  not  have  spent  more  time  and  strength 
on  it.  My  zeal  so  far  outran  even  that  of  sprightly  Miss 


IRRITABILITY  347 

Jenny,  that  she  could  account  for  it  only  by  saucily  sug 
gesting  that  papa  must  be  fast  getting  into  his  second  child 
hood. 

But  did  n't  we  have  a  splendid  lighting-up  ?  Did  n't  I 
and  my  youngest  grandson,  little  Tom,  head  the  procession 
magnificent  in  paper  soldier-caps,  blowing  tin  trumpets  and 
beating  drums,  as  we  marched  round  the  twinkling  glories 
of  our  Christmas-tree,  all  glittering  with  red  and  blue  and 
green  tapers,  and  with  a  splendid  angel  on  top  with  great 
gold  wings,  the  cutting  out  and  adjusting  of  which  had  held 
my  eyes  waking  for  nights  before  ?  I  had  had  oceans  of 
trouble  with  that  angel,  owing  to  an  unlucky  sprain  in  his 
left  wing,  which  had  required  constant  surgical  attention 
through  the  week,  and  which  I  feared  might  fall  loose  again 
at  the  important  and  blissful  moment  of  exhibition  :  but  no, 
the  Fates  were  in  our  favor ;  the  angel  behaved  beautifully, 
and  kept  his  wings  as  crisp  as  possible,  and  the  tapers  all 
burned  splendidly,  and  the  little  folks  were  as  crazy  with 
delight  as  my  most  ardent  hopes  could  have  desired ;  and 
then  we  romped  and  played  and  frolicked  as  long  as  little 
eyes  could  keep  open,  and  long  after ;  and  so  passed  away 
our  Christmas. 

I  had  forgotten  to  speak  of  the  Christmas  dinner,  that 
solid  feast  of  fat  things,  on  which  we  also  luxuriated.  Mrs. 
Crowfield  outdid  all  household  traditions  in  that  feast :  the 
turkey  and  the  chickens,  the  jellies  and  the  sauces,  the  pies 
and  the  pudding,  behold,  are  they  not  written  in  the  tablets 
of  Memory  which  remain  to  this  day  ? 

The  holidays  passed  away  hilariously,  and  at  New  Year's, 
I,  according  to  time-honored  custom,  went  forth  to  make 
my  calls  and  see  my  fair  friends,  while  my  wife  and  daugh 
ters  stayed  at  home  to  dispense  the  hospitalities  of  the  day 
to  their  gentlemen  friends.  All  was  merry,  cheerful,  and 
it  was  agreed  on  all  hands  that  a  more  joyous  holiday  sea 
son  had  never  flown  over  us. 


348  LITTLE  FOXES 

But,  somehow,  the  week  after,  I  began  to  be  sensible  of 
a  running-down  in  the  wheels.  I  had  an  article  to  write 
for  the  "  Atlantic,'7  but  felt  mopish  and  could  not  write. 
My  dinner  had  not  its  usual  relish,  and  I  had  an  indefinite 
sense  everywhere  of  something  going  wrong.  My  coal  bill 
came  in,  and  I  felt  sure  we  were  being  extravagant,  and 
that  our  John  Furnace  wasted  the  coal.  My  grandsons 
and  granddaughters  came  to  see  us,  and  I  discovered  that 
they  had  high-pitched  voices,  and  burst  in  without  wiping 
their  shoes,  and  it  suddenly  occurred  powerfully  to  my  mind 
that  they  were  not  being  well  brought  up,  —  evidently, 
they  were  growing  up  rude  and  noisy.  I  discovered  several 
tumblers  and  plates  with  the  edges  chipped,  and  made  bitter 
reflections  on  the  carelessness  of  Irish  servants  ;  —  our  crock 
ery  was  going  to  destruction,  along  with  the  rest.  Then, 
on  opening  one  of  my  paper-drawers,  I  found  that  Jenny's 
one  drawer  of  worsted  had  overflowed  into  two  or  three ; 
Jenny  was  growing  careless ;  besides,  worsted  is  dear,  arid 
girls  knit  away  small  fortunes,  without  knowing  it,  on  little 
duds  that  do  nobody  any  good.  Moreover,  Maggie  had 
three  times  put  my  slippers  into  the  hall-closet,  instead  of 
leaving  them  where  I  wanted,  under  my  study-table.  Mrs. 
Crowfield  ought  to  look  after  things  more  ;  every  servant, 
from  end  to  end  of  the  house,  was  getting  out  of  the  traces ; 
it  was  strange  she  did  not  see  it. 

All  this  I  vented,  from  time  to  time,  in  short,  crusty 
sayings  and  doings,  as  freely  as  if  I  had  n't  just  written  an 
article  on  "  Little  Foxes  "  in  the  last  "  Atlantic,"  till  at 
length  my  eyes  were  opened  on  my  own  state  and  condition. 

It  was  evening,  and  I  had  just  laid  up  the  fire  in  the 
most  approved  style  of  architecture,  and  projecting  my  feet 
into  my  slippers,  sat  spitefully  cutting  the  leaves  of  a  caus 
tic  review. 

Mrs.  Crowfield  took  the  tongs  and  altered  the  disposition 
of  a  stick. 


IRRITABILITY  349 

^ 

"  My  dear,"  I  said,  "  I  do  wish  you  7d  let  the  fire  alone, 
—  you  always  put  it  out." 

"  I  was  merely  admitting  a  little  air  between  the  sticks," 
said  my  wife. 

"  You  always  make  matters  worse  when  you  touch  the 
fire." 

As  if  in  contradiction,  a  bright  tongue  of  flame  darted  up 
between  the  sticks,  and  the  fire  began  chattering  and  snap 
ping  defiance  at  me.  Now,  if  there  's  anything  which  would 
provoke  a  saint,  it  is  to  be  jeered  and  snapped  at  in  that 
way  by  a  man's  own  fire.  It 's  an  unbearable  impertinence. 
I  threw  out  my  leg  impatiently,  and  hit  Eover,  who  yelped 
a  yelp  that  finished  the  upset  of  my  nerves.  I  gave  him  a 
hearty  kick,  that  he  might  have  something  to  yelp  for,  and 
in  the  movement  upset  Jenny's  embroidery-basket. 

"  Oh,  papa  !  " 

"  Confound  your  baskets  and  balls  !  they  are  everywhere, 
so  that  a  man  can't  move ;  useless,  wasteful  things,  too." 

"  Wasteful  ?  "  said  Jenny,  coloring  indignantly ;  for  if 
there  ?s  anything  Jenny  piques  herself  upon,  it  ?s  economy. 

"  Yes,  wasteful,  —  wasting  time  and  money  both.  Here 
are  hundreds  of  shivering  poor  to  be  clothed,  and  Christian 
females  ^lt  and  do  nothing  but  crochet  worsted  into  useless 
knickknacks.  If  they  would  be  working  for  the  poor,  there 
would  be  some  sense  in  it.  But  it 's  all  just  alike,  no  real 
Christianity  in  the  world,  —  nothing  but  organized  selfish 
ness  and  self-indulgence." 

"  My  dear,"  said  Mrs.  Crowfield,  "  you  are  not  well  to 
night.  Things  are  not  quite  so  desperate  as  they  appear. 
You  haven't  got  over  Christmas  week." 

"  I  am  well.  Never  was  better.  But  I  can  see,  I  hope, 
what 's  before  my  eyes ;  and  the  fact  is,  Mrs.  Crowfield, 
things  must  not  go  on  as  they  are  going.  There  must  be 
more  care,  more  attention  to  details.  There  's  Maggie,  — 
that  girl  never  does  what  she  is  told.  You  are  too  slack  with 


350  LITTLE  FOXES 

her,  ma'am.  She  will  light  the  fire  with  the  last  paper, 
and  she  won't  put  my  slippers  in  the  right  place ;  and  I 
can't  have  my  study  made  the  general  catch-all  and  mena 
gerie  for  Rover  and  Jenny,  and  her  baskets  and  balls,  and 
for  all  the  family  litter." 

Just  at  this  moment  I  overheard  a  sort  of  aside  from 
Jenny,  who  was  swelling  with  repressed  indignation  at  my 
attack  on  her  worsted.  She  sat  with  her  back  to  me, 
knitting  energetically,  and  said,  in  a  low,  but  very  decisive 
tone,  as  she  twitched  her  yarn  :  — 

"  Now  if  /  should  talk  in  that  way,  people  would  call  me 
cross,  —  and  that  ?s  the  whole  of  it." 

I  pretended  to  be  looking  into  the  fire  in  an  absent- 
minded  state ;  but  Jenny's  words  had  started  a  new  idea. 
Was  that  it  ?  Was  that  the  whole  matter  ?  Was  it,  then, 
a  fact,  that  the  house,  the  servants,  Jenny  and  her  worsteds, 
Rover  and  Mrs.  Crowfield,  were  all  going  on  pretty  much 
as  usual,  and  that  the  only  difficulty  was  that  I  was  cross  ? 
How  many  times  had  I  encouraged  Rover  to  lie  just  where 
he  was  lying  when  I  kicked  him  !  How  many  times,  in 
better  moods,  had  I  complimented  Jenny  on  her  neat  little 
fancy-works,  and  declared  that  I  liked  the  social  compan 
ionship  of  ladies'  work-baskets  among  my  papers  !  Yes,  it 
was  clear.  After  all,  things  were  much  as  they  had  been  ; 
only  I  was  cross. 

Cross.  I  put  it  to  myself  in  that  simple,  old-fashioned 
word,  instead  of  saying  that  I  was  out  of  spirits,  or  nervous, 
or  using  any  of  the  other  smooth  phrases  with  which  we 
good  Christians  cover  up  our  little  sins  of  temper.  "  Here 
you  are,  Christopher,"  said  I  to  myself,  "  a  literary  man, 
with  a  somewhat  delicate  nervous  organization  and  a  sen 
sitive  stomach,  and  you  have  been  eating  like  a  sailor  or 
a  ploughman ;  you  have  been  gallivanting  and  merrymaking 
and  playing  the  boy  for  two  weeks  ;  up  at  all  sorts  of  ir 
regular  hours  and  into  all  sorts  of  boyish  performances ; 


IRRITABILITY  351 

and  the  consequence  is,  that,  like  a  thoughtless  young  scape 
grace,  you  have  used  up  in  ten  days  the  capital  of  nervous 
energy  that  was  meant  to  last  you  ten  weeks.  You  can't 
eat  your  cake  and  have  it  too,  Christopher.  When  the  ner 
vous-fluid  source  of  cheerfulness,  giver  of  pleasant  sensa 
tions  and  pleasant  views,  is  all  spent,  you  can't  feel  cheer 
ful  ;  things  cannot  look  as  they  did  when  you  were  full  of 
life  and  vigor.  When  the  tide  is  out,  there  is  nothing  but 
unsightly,  ill-smelling  tide-mud,  and  you  can't  help  it ;  but 
you  can  keep  your  senses,  —  you  can  know  what  is  the 
matter  with  you,  —  you  can  keep  from  visiting  your  over 
dose  of  mince-pies  and  candies  and  jocularities  on  the  heads 
of  Mrs.  Crowfield,  Rover,  and  Jenny,  whether  in  the  form 
of  virulent  morality,  pungent  criticisms,  or  a  free  kick,  such 
as  you  just  gave  the  poor  brute." 

"  Come  here,  Rover,  poor  dog  !  "  said  I,  extending  my 
hand  to  Rover,  who  cowered  at  the  farther  corner  of  the 
room,  eying  me  wistfully,  —  "  come  here,  you  poor  doggie, 
and  make  up  with  your  master.  There,  there  !  Was  his 
master  cross  ?  Well,  he  knows  it.  We  must  forgive  and 
forget,  old  boy,  must  n't  we  ?  "  And  Rover  nearly  broke 
his  own  back  and  tore  me  to  pieces  with  his  tumultuous 
tail-waggings. 

"As  for  you,  puss,"  I  said  to  Jenny,  "I  am  much 
obliged  to  you  for  your  free  suggestion.  You  must  take  my 
cynical  moralities  for  what  they  are  worth,  and  put  your 
little  traps  into  as  many  of  my  drawers  as  you  like." 

In  short,  I  made  it  up  handsomely  all  around,  —  even 
apologizing  to  Mrs.  Crowfield,  who,  by  the  bye,  has  summered 
and  wintered  me  so  many  years,  and  knows  all  my  little 
seams  and  crinkles  so  well,  that  she  took  my  irritable, 
unreasonable  spirit  as  tranquilly  as  if  I  had  been  a  baby 
cutting  a  new  tooth. 

"  Of  course,  Chris,  I  knew  what  the  matter  was ;  don't 
disturb  yourself,"  she  said,  as  I  began  my  apology ;  "  we 


352  LITTLE   FOXES 

understand  each  other.     But  there  is  one  thing  I   have  to 
say,  and  that  is,  that  your  article  ought  to  be  ready. " 

"  Ah,  well,  then,"  said  I,  "  like  other  great  writers,  I 
shall  make  capital  of  my  own  sins,  and  treat  of  the  second 
little  family  fox." 

IRRITABILITY 

Irritability  is,  more  than  most  unlovely  states,  a  sin  of 
the  flesh.  It  is  not,  like  envy,  malice,  spite,  revenge,  a 
vice  which  we  may  suppose  to  belong  equally  to  an  em 
bodied  or  a  disembodied  spirit.  In  fact,  it  conies  nearer  to 
being  physical  depravity  than  anything  I  know  of.  There 
are  some  bodily  states,  some  conditions  of  the  nerves,  such 
that  we  could  not  conceive  of  even  an  angelic  spirit  con 
fined  in  a  body  thus  disordered  as  being  able  to  do  any 
more  than  simply  endure.  It  is  a  state  of  nervous  torture  ; 
and  the  attacks  which  the  wretched  victim  makes  on  others 
are  as  much  a  result  of  disease  as  the  snapping  and  biting 
of  a  patient  convulsed  with  hydrophobia. 

Then,  again,  there  are  other  people  who  go  through  life 
loving  and  beloved,  desired  in  every  circle,  held  up  in  the 
Church  as  examples  of  the  power  of  religion,  who,  after  all, 
deserve  no  credit  for  these  things.  Their  spirits  are  lodged 
in  an  animal  nature  so  tranquil,  so  cheerful,  all  the  sensa 
tions  which  come  to  them  are  so  fresh  and  vigorous  and 
pleasant,  that  they  cannot  help  viewing  the  world  charitably 
and  seeing  everything  through  a  glorified  medium.  The 
ill  temper  of  others  does  not  provoke  them  ;  perplexing 
business  never  sets  their  nerves  to  vibrating ;  and  all  their 
lives  long  they  walk  in  the  serene  sunshine  of  perfect 
animal  health. 

Look  at  Rover  there.  He  is  never  nervous,  never  cross, 
never  snaps  or  snarls,  and  is  ready,  the  moment  after  the 
grossest  affront,  to  wag  the  tail  of  forgiveness,  —  all  be 
cause  kind  nature  has  put  his  dog's  body  together  so  that 


IRRITABILITY  353 

it  always  works  harmoniously.  If  every  person  in  the 
world  were  gifted  with  a  stomach  and  nerves  like  his,  it 
would  be  a  far  better  and  happier  world,  no  doubt.  The 
man  said  a  good  thing  who  made  the  remark,  that  the 
foundation  of  all  intellectual  and  moral  worth  must  be  laid 
in  a  good  healthy  animal. 

Now  I  think  it  is  undeniable  that  the  peace  and  happi 
ness  of  the  home  circle  are  very  generally  much  invaded  by 
the  recurrence  in  its  members  of  these  states  of  bodily  irri 
tability.  Every  person,  if  he  thinks  the  matter  over,  will 
see  that  his  condition  in  life,  the  character  of  his  friends,  his 
estimate  of  their  virtues  and  failings,  his  hopes  and  expec 
tations,  are  all  very  much  modified  by  these  things.  Cannot 
we  all  remember  going  to  bed  as  very  ill-used,  persecuted 
individuals,  all  whose  friends  were  unreasonable,  whose  life 
was  full  of  trials  and  crosses,  and  waking  up  on  a  bright 
bird-singing  morning  to  find  all  these  illusions  gone  with 
the  fogs  of  the  night  ?  Our  friends  are  nice  people,  after 
all ;  the  little  things  that  annoyed  us  look  ridiculous  by 
bright  sunshine  ;  and  we  are  fortunate  individuals. 

The  philosophy  of  life,  then,  as  far  as  this  matter  is  con 
cerned,  must  consist  of  two  things  :  first,  to  keep  ourselves 
out  of  irritable  bodily  states ;  and  second,  to  understand 
and  control  these  states,  when  we  cannot  ward  them  off. 

Of  course,  the  first  of  these  is  the  most  important ;  and 
yet,  of  all  things,  it  seems  to  be  least  looked  into  and  un 
derstood.  We  find  abundant  rules  for  the  government  of 
the  tongue  and  temper ;  it  is  a  slough  into  which,  John 
Bunyan  hath  it,  cart-loads  of  wholesome  instructions  have 
been  thrown ;  but  how  to  get  and  keep  that  healthy  state 
of  brain,  stomach,  and  nerves  which  takes  away  the  tempta 
tion  to  ill  temper  and  anger  is  a  subject  which  moral  and 
religious  teachers  seem  scarcely  to  touch  upon. 

Now,  without  running  into  technical,  physiological  lan 
guage,  it  is  evident,  as  regards  us  human  beings,  that  there 


354  LITTLE  FOXES 

is  a  power  by  which  we  live  and  move  and  have  our  being, 
—  by  which  the  brain  thinks  and  wills,  the  stomach  digests, 
the  blood  circulates,  and  all  the  different  provinces  of  the 
little  man-kingdom  do  their  work.  This  something  —  call 
it  nervous  fluid,  nervous  power,  vital  energy,  life-force,  or 
anything  else  that  you  will  —  is  a  perfectly  understood,  if 
not  a  definable  thing.  It  is  plain,  too,  that  people  possess 
this  force  in  very  different  degrees ;  some  generating  it  as  a 
high  pressure  engine  does  steam,  and  using  it  constantly, 
with  an  apparently  inexhaustible  flow  ;  and  others  who  have 
little,  and  spend  it  quickly.  We  have  a  common  saying, 
that  this  or  that  person  is  soon  used  up.  Now  most  nervous 
irritable  states  of  temper  are  the  mere  physical  result  of  a 
used-up  condition.  The  person  has  overspent  his  nervous 
energy, : —  like  a  man  who  should  eat  up  on  Monday  the 
whole  food  which  was  to  keep  him  for  a  week,  and  go  growl 
ing  and  faint  through  the  other  days  ;  or  the  quantity  of 
nervous  force  which  was  wanted  to  carry  on  the  whole  sys 
tem  in  all  its  parts  is  seized  on  by  some  one  monopolizing 
portion,  and  used  up  to  the  loss  and  detriment  of  the  rest. 
Thus,  with  men  of  letters,  an  exorbitant  brain  expends  on 
its  own  workings  what  belongs  to  the  other  offices  of  the 
body  :  the  stomach  has  nothing  to  carry  on  digestion ;  the 
secretions  are  badly  made  ;  and  the  imperfectly  assimilated 
nourishment,  that  is  conveyed  to  every  little  nerve  and  tis 
sue,  carries  with  it  an  acrid,  irritating  quality,  producing 
general  restlessness  and  discomfort.  So  men  and  women  go 
struggling  on  through  their  threescore  and  ten  years,  scarcely 
one  in  a  thousand  knowing  through  life  that  perfect  balance 
of  parts,  that  appropriate  harmony  of  energies,  that  make  a 
healthy,  kindly  animal  condition,  predisposing  to  cheerful 
ness  and  good-will. 

We  Americans  are,  in  the  first  place,  a  nervous,  excitable 
people.  Multitudes  of  children,  probably  the  great  major 
ity  in  the  upper  walks  of  life,  are  born  into  the  world  with 


IRRITABILITY  355 

weaknesses  of  the  nervous  organization,  or  of  the  brain  or 
stomach,  which  make  them  incapable  of  any  strong  excite 
ment  or  prolonged  exertion  without  some  lesion  or  derange 
ment  ;  so  that  they  are  continually  being  checked,  laid  up,  and 
made  invalids  in  the  midst  of  their  days.  Life  here  in 
America  is  so  fervid,  so  fast,  our  climate  is  so  stimulating, 
with  its  clear,  bright  skies,  its  rapid  and  sudden  changes  of 
temperature,  that  the  tendencies  to  nervous  disease  are  con 
stantly  aggravated. 

Under  these  circumstances,  unless  men  and  women  make 
a  conscience,  a  religion,  of  saving  and  sparing  something  of 
themselves  expressly  for  home  life  and  home  consumption, 
it  must  follow  that  home  will  often  be  merely  a  sort  of 
refuge  for  us  to  creep  into  when  we  are  used  up  and  irri 
table. 

Papa  is  up  and  off,  after  a  hasty  breakfast,  and  drives  all 
day  in  his  business,  putting  into  it  all  there  is  in  him,  let 
ting  it  drink  up  brain  and  nerve  and  body  and  soul,  and 
coming  home  jaded  and  exhausted,  so  that  he  cannot  bear 
the  cry  of  the  baby,  and  the  frolics  and  pattering  of  the 
nursery  seem  horrid  and  needless  confusion.  The  little  ones 
say,  in  their  plain  vernacular,  "  Papa  is  cross." 

Mamma  goes  out  to  a  party  that  keeps  her  up  till  one  or 
two  in  the  morning,  breathes  bad  air,  eats  indigestible  food, 
and  the  next  day  is  so  nervous  that  every  straw  and  thread 
in  her  domestic  path  are  insufferable. 

Papas  that  pursue  business  thus  day  after  day,  and  mam 
mas  that  go  into  company,  as  it  is  called,  night  after  night, 
what  is  there  left  in  or  of  them  to  make  an  agreeable  fire 
side  with,  to  brighten  their  home  and  inspire  their  children  ? 

True,  the  man  says  he  cannot  help  himself,  —  business 
requires  it.  But  what  is  the  need  of  rolling  up  money 
at  the  rate  at  which  he  is  seeking  to  do  it  ?  Why  not 
have  less,  and  take  some  time  to  enjoy  his  home,  and  cheer 
up  his  wife,  and  form  the  minds  of  his  children  ?  Why 


356  LITTLE  FOXES 

spend  himself  down  to  the  last  drop  on  the  world,  and  give 
to  the  dearest  friends  he  has  only  the  bitter  dregs  ? 

Much  of  the  preaching  which  the  pulpit  and  the  Church 
have  leveled  at  fashionable  amusements  has  failed  of  any 
effect  at  all,  because  wrongly  put.  A  cannonade  has  been 
opened  upon  dancing,  for  example,  and  all  for  reasons  that 
will  not,  in  the  least,  bear  looking  into.  It  is  vain  to  talk 
of  dancing  as  a  sin  because  practiced  in  a  dying  world  where 
souls  are  passing  into  eternity.  If  dancing  is  a  sin  for  this 
reason,  so  is  playing  marbles,  or  frolicking  with  one's  chil 
dren,  or  enjoying  a  good  dinner,  or  doing  fifty  other  things 
which  nobody  ever  dreamed  of  objecting  to. 

If  the  preacher  were  to  say  that  anything  is  a  sin  which 
uses  up  the  strength  we  need  for  daily  duties,  and  leaves 
us  fagged  out  and  irritable  at  just  those  times  and  in  just 
those  places  when  and  where  we  need  most  to  be  healthy, 
cheerful,  and  self-possessed,  he  would  say  a  thing  that  none 
of  his  hearers  would  dispute.  If  he  should  add,  that  dan 
cing-parties,  beginning  at  ten  o'clock  at  night  and  ending  at 
four  o'clock  in  the  morning,  do  use  up  the  strength,  weaken 
the  nerves,  and  leave  a  person  wholly  unfit  for  any  home 
duty,  he  would  also  be  saying  what  very  few  people  would 
deny  ;  and  then  his  case  would  be  made  out.  If  he  should 
say  that  it  is  wrong  to  breathe  bad  air  and  fill  the  stomach 
with  unwholesome  dainties,  so  as  to  make  one  restless,  ill 
natured,  and  irritable  for  days,  he  would  also  say  what  few 
would  deny,  and  his  preaching  might  have  some  hope  of 
success. 

The  true  manner  of  judging  of  the  worth  of  amusements 
is  to  try  them  by  their  effects  on  the  nerves  and  spirits 
the  day  after.  True  amusement  ought  to  be,  as  the  word 
indicates,  recreation,  —  something  that  refreshes,  turns  us 
out  anew,  rests  the  mind  and  body  by  change,  and  gives 
cheerfulness  and  alacrity  to  our  return  to  duty. 

The  true  objection  to  all  stimulants,  alcoholic  and  nar- 


IRKIT  ABILITY  357 

cotic,  consists  simply  in  this,  —  that  they  are  a  form  of 
overdraft  on  the  nervous  energy,  which  helps  us  to  use  up 
in  one  hour  the  strength  of  whole  days. 

A  man  uses  up  all  the  fair,  legal  interest  of  nervous  power 
by  too  much  business,  too  much  care,  or  too  much  amuse 
ment.  He  has  now  a  demand  to  meet.  He  has  a  complicated 
account  to  make  up,  an  essay  or  a  sermon  to  write,  and  he 
primes  himself  by  a  cup  of  coffee,  a  cigar,  a  glass  of  spirits. 
This  is  exactly  the  procedure  of  a  man  who,  having  used 
the  interest  of  his  money,  begins  to  dip  into  the  principal. 
The  strength  a  man  gets  in  this  way  is  just  so  much  taken 
out  of  his  life-blood ;  it  is  borrowing  of  a  merciless  cred 
itor,  who  will  exact,  in  time,  the  pound  of  flesh  nearest  his 
heart. 

Much  of  the  irritability  which  spoils  home  happiness  is 
the  letting-down  from  the  over-excitement  of  stimulus. 
Some  will  drink  coffee,  when  they  own  every  day  that  it 
makes  them  nervous ;  some  will  drug  themselves  with 
tobacco,  and  some  with  alcohol,  and,  for  a  few  hours  of 
extra  brightness,  give  themselves  and  their  friends  many 
hours  when  amiability  or  agreeableness  is  quite  out  of  the 
question.  There  are  people  calling  themselves  Christians 
who  live  in  miserable  thraldom,  forever  in  debt  to  Nature, 
forever  overdrawing  on  their  just  resources,  and  using  up 
their  patrimony,  because  they  have  not  the  moral  courage  to 
break  away  from  a  miserable  appetite. 

The  same  may  be  said  of  numberless  indulgences  of  the 
palate,  which  tax  the  stomach  beyond  its  power,  and  bring 
on  all  the  horrors  of  indigestion.  It  is  almost  impossible 
for  a  confirmed  dyspeptic  to  act  like  a  good  Christian ;  but 
a  good  Christian  ought  not  to  become  a  confirmed  dyspeptic. 
Reasonable  self-control,  abstaining  from  all  unseasonable 
indulgence,  may  prevent  or  put  an  end  to  dyspepsia,  and 
many  suffer  and  make  their  friends  suffer  only  because  they 
will  persist  in  eating  what  they  know  is  hurtful  to  them. 


358  LITTLE   FOXES 

But  it  is  not  merely  in  worldly  business,  or  fashionable 
amusements,  or  the  gratification  of  appetite,  that  people  are 
tempted  to  overdraw  and  use  up  in  advance  their  life-force. 
It  is  done  in  ways  more  insidious,  because  connected  with 
our  moral  and  religious  faculties.  There  are  religious  exal 
tations  beyond  the  regular  pulse  and  beatings  of  ordinary 
nature,  that  quite  as  surely  gravitate  downward  into  the  mire 
of  irritability.  The  ascent  to  the  third  heaven  lets  even  the 
Apostle  down  to  a  thorn  in  the  flesh,  the  messenger  of 
Satan  to  buffet  him. 

It  is  the  temptation  of  natures  in  which  the  moral  faculties 
predominate  to  overdo  in  the  outward  expression  and  activi 
ties  of  religion  till  they  are  used  up  and  irritable,  and  have 
no  strength  left  to  set  a  good  example  in  domestic  life. 

The  Reverend  Mr.  X.  in  the  pulpit  to-day  appears  with 
the  face  of  an  angel ;  he  soars  away  into  those  regions  of 
exalted  devotion  where  his  people  can  but  faintly  gaze  after 
him ;  he  tells  them  of  the  victory  that  overcometh  the 
world,  of  an  unmoved  faith  that  fears  no  evil,  of  a  serenity 
of  love  that  no  outward  event  can  ruffle  ;  and  all  look  after 
him  and  wonder,  and  wish  they  could  so  soar. 

Alas  !  the  exaltation  which  inspires  these  sublime  con 
ceptions,  these  celestial  ecstasies,  is  a  double  and  treble 
draft  on  nature,  —  and  poor  Mrs.  X.  knows,  when  she  hears 
him  preaching,  that  days  of  miserable  reaction  are  before 
her.  He  had  been  a  fortnight  driving  before  a  gale  of 
strong  excitement,  doing  all  the  time  twice  or  thrice  as 
much  as  in  his  ordinary  state  he  could,  and  sustaining  him 
self  by  the  stimulus  of  strong  coffee.  He  has  preached  or 
exhorted  every  night,  and  conversed  with  religious  inquirers 
every  day,  seeming  to  himself  to  become  stronger  and 
stronger,  because  every  day  more  and  more  excitable  and 
excited.  To  his  hearers,  with  his  flushed  sunken  cheek  and 
his  glittering  eye,  he  looks  like  some  spiritual  being  just 
trembling  on  his  flight  for  upper  worlds  ;  but  to  poor  Mrs. 


IRRITABILITY  359 

X.,  whose  husband  he  is,  things  wear  a  very  different  aspect. 
Her  woman  and  mother  instincts  tell  her  that  he  is  drawing 
on  his  life-capital  with  both  hands,  and  that  the  hours  of  a 
terrible  settlement  must  come,  and  the  days  of  darkness  will 
be  many.  He  who  spoke  so  beautifully  of  the  peace  of  a 
soul  made  perfect  will  not  be  able  to  bear  the  cry  of  his 
baby  or  the  pattering  feet  of  any  of  the  poor  little  X.'s,  who 
must  be  sent 

"Anywhere,  anywhere, 
Out  of  his  sight;" 

he  who  discoursed  so  devoutly  of  perfect  trust  in  God  will 
be  nervous  about  the  butcher's  bill,  sure  of  going  to  ruin 
because  both  ends  of  the  salary  don't  meet ;  and  he  who 
could  so  admiringly  tell  of  the  silence  of  Jesus  under  pro 
vocation  will  but  too  often  speak  unadvisedly  with  his  lips. 
Poor  Mr.  X.  will  be  morally  insane  for  days  or  weeks,  and 
absolutely  incapable  of  preaching  Christ  in  the  way  that  is 
the  most  effective,  by  setting  Him  forth  in  his  own  daily 
example. 

What  then  ?  must  we  not  do  the  work  of  the  Lord  ? 
Yes,  certainly  ;  but  the  first  work  of  the  Lord,  that  for 
which  provision  is  to  be  made  in  the  first  place,  is  to  set  a 
good  example  as  a  Christian  man.  Better  labor  for  years 
steadily,  diligently,  doing  every  day  only  what  the  night's 
rest  can  repair,  avoiding  those  cheating  stimulants  that'  over 
tax  Nature,  and  illustrating  the  sayings  of  the  pulpit  by  the 
daily  life  in  the  family,  than  to  pass  life  in  exaltations  and 
depressions,  resulting  from  overstrained  labors,  supported  by 
unnatural  stimulus. 

The  same  principles  apply  to  hearers  as  to  preachers. 
Eeligious  services  must  be  judged  of  like  amusements,  by 
their  effect  on  the  life.  If  an  overdose  of  prayers,  hymns, 
and  sermons  leaves  us  tired,  nervous,  and  cross,  it  is  only 
not  quite  as  bad  as  an  overdose  of  fashionable  folly. 

It    could  be  wished  that    in  every  neighborhood  there 


3 "60  LITTLE   FOXES 

might  be  one  or  two  calm,  sweet  daily  services  which  should 
morning  and  evening  unite  for  a  few  solemn  moments  the 
hearts  of  all  as  in  one  family,  and  feed  with  a  constant, 
unnoticed,  daily  supply  the  lamp  of  faith  and  love.  Such 
are  some  of  the  daily  prayer-meetings  which  for  eight  or 
ten  years  past  have  held  their  even  tenor  in  some  of  our 
New  England  cities,  and  such  the  morning  and  evening  ser 
vices  which  we  are  glad  to  see  obtaining  in  the  Episcopal 
churches.  Everything  which  brings  religion  into  habitual 
contact  with  life,  and  makes  it  part  of  a  healthy,  cheerful 
average  living,  we  hail  as  a  sign  of  a  better  day.  Nothing 
is  so  good  for  health  as  daily  devotion.  It  is  the  best 
soother  of  the  nerves,  the  best  antidote  to  care ;  and  we 
trust  erelong  that  all  Christian  people  will  be  of  one  mind 
in  this,  and  that  neighborhoods  will  be  families  gathering 
daily  around  one  altar,  praying  not  for  themselves  merely, 
but  for  each  other. 

The  conclusion  of  the  whole  matter  is  this.  Set  apart 
some  provision  to  make  merry  with  at  home,  and  guard  that 
reserve  as  religiously  as  the  priests  guarded  the  shew-bread 
in  the  temple.  However  great  you  are,  however  good, 
however  wide  the  general  interests  that  you  may  control, 
you  gain  nothing  by  neglecting  home  duties.  You  must 
leave  enough  of  yourself  to  be  able  to  bear  and  forbear, 
give  and  forgive,  and  be  a  source  of  life  and  cheerfulness 
around  the  hearthstone.  The  great  sign  given  by  the  Proph 
ets  of  the  coming  of  the  Millennium  is,  —  what  do  you 
suppose  ?  —  "  He  shall  turn  the  heart  of  the  fathers  to  the 
children,  and  the  heart  of  the  children  to  their  fathers,  lest 
I  come  and  smite  the  earth  with  a  curse." 

Thus  much  on  avoiding  unhealthy,  irritable  states. 

But  it  still  remains  that  a  large  number  of  people  will 
be  subject  to  them  unavoidably  for  these  reasons. 

First.  The  use  of  tobacco,  alcohol,  and  other  kindred 
stimulants,  for  so  many  generations,  has  vitiated  the  brain 


IRRITABILITY  361 

and  nervous  system  of  modern  civilized  races  so  that  it  is 
not  what  it  was  in  former  times.  Michelet  treats  of  this 
subject  quite  at  large  in  some  of  his  late  works  ;  and  we 
have  to  face  the  fact  of  a  generation  born  with  an  impaired 
nervous  organization,  who  will  need  constant  care  and  wis 
dom  to  avoid  unhealthy,  morbid  irritation. 

There  is  a  temperament  called  the  HYPOCHONDRIAC,  to 
which  many  persons,  some  of  them  the  brightest,  the  most 
interesting,  the  most  gifted,  are  born  heirs,  —  a  want  of 
balance  of  the  nervous  powers,  which  tends  constantly  to 
periods  of  high  excitement  and  of  consequent  depression,  — 
an  unfortunate  inheritance  for  the  possessor,  though  accom 
panied  often  with  the  greatest  talents.  Sometimes,  too,  it 
is  the  unfortunate  lot  of  those  who  have  not  talents,  who 
bear  its  burdens  and  its  anguish  without  its  rewards. 

People  of  this  temperament  are  subject  to  fits  of  gloom 
and  despondency,  of  nervous  irritability  and  suffering,  which 
darken  the  aspect  of  the  whole  world  to  them,  which  pre 
sent  lying  reports  of  their  friends,  of  themselves,  of  the 
circumstances  of  their  life,  and  of  all  with  which  they  have 
to  do. 

Now  the  highest  philosophy  for  persons  thus  afflicted  is 
to  understand  themselves  and  their  tendencies,  to  know  that 
these  fits  of  gloom  and  depression  are  just  as  much  a  form 
of  disease  as  a  fever  or  a  toothache,  to  know  that  it  is  the 
peculiarity  of  the  disease  to  fill  the  mind  with  wretched 
illusions,  to  make  them  seem  miserable  and  unlovely  to 
themselves,  to  make  their  nearest  friends  seem  unjust  and 
unkind,  to  make  all  events  appear  to  be  going  wrong  and 
tending  to  destruction  and  ruin. 

The  evils  and  burdens  of  such  a  temperament  are  half 
removed  when  a  man  once  knows  that  he  has  it  and  recog 
nizes  it  for  a  disease,  and  when  he  does  not  trust  himself  to 
speak  and  act  in  those  bitter  hours  as  if  there  were  any 
truth  in  what  he  thinks  and  feels  and  sees.  He  who  has 


362  LITTLE   FOXES 

not  attained  to  this  wisdom  overwhelms  his  friends  and  his 
family  with  the  waters  of  bitterness ;  he  stings  with  unjust 
accusations,  and  makes  his  fireside  dreadful  with  fancies 
which  are  real  to  him,  but  false  as  the  ravings  of  fever. 

A  sensible  person,  thus  diseased,  who  has  found  out 
what  ails  him,  will  shut  his  mouth  resolutely,  not  to  give 
utterance  to  the  dark  thoughts  that  infest  his  soul. 

A  lady  of  great  brilliancy  and  wit,  who  was  subject  to 
these  periods,  once  said  to  me,"  My  dear  sir,  there  are  times 
when  I  know  I  am  possessed  of  the  Devil,  and  then  I  never 
let  myself  speak."  And  so  this  wise  woman  carried  her 
burden  about  with  her  in  a  determined,  cheerful  reticence, 
leaving  always  the  impression  of  a  cheery,  kindly  temper, 
when,  if  she  had  spoken  out  a  tithe  of  what  she  thought 
and  felt  in  her  morbid  hours,  she  would  have  driven  all  her 
friends  from  her,  and  made  others  as  miserable  as  she  was 
herself.  She  was  a  sunbeam,  a  life-giving  presence  in  every 
family,  by  the  power  of  self-knowledge  and  self-control. 
Such  victories  as  this  are  the  victories  of  real  saints. 

But  if  the  victim  of  these  glooms  is  once  tempted  to  lift 
their  heavy  load  by  the  use  of  any  stimulus  whatever,  he 
or  she  is  a  lost  man  or  woman.  It  is  from  this  sad  class 
more  than  any  other  that  the  vast  army  of  drunkards  and 
opium-eaters  is  recruited.  Dr.  Johnson,  one  of  the  most 
brilliant  examples  of  the  hypochondriac  temperament  which 
literature  affords,  has  expressed  a  characteristic  of  the  race, 
in  what  he  says  of  himself,  that  he  could  "  practice  Absti 
nence  but  not  Temperance."  Hypochondriacs  who  be 
gin  to  rely  on  stimulus  almost  without  exception  find  this 
to  be  true.  They  cannot,  they  will  not  be  moderate. 
Whatever  stimulant  they  take  for  relief  will  create  an  un 
controllable  appetite,  a  burning  passion.  The  temperament 
itself  lies  in  the  direction  of  insanity.  It  needs  the  most 
healthful,  careful,  even  regimen  and  management  to  keep 
it  within  the  bounds  of  soundness  ;  but  the  introduction  of 


IRKITABILITY  363 

stimulants  deepens  its  gloom  with  the  shadows  of  utter 
despair. 

All  parents,  in  the  education  of  their  children,  should 
look  out  for  and  understand  the  signs  of  this  temperament. 
It  appears  in  early  childhood  ;  and  a  child  inclined  to  fits 
of  depression  should  be  marked  as  a  subject  of  the  most 
thoughtful,  painstaking  physical  and  moral  training.  All 
over-excitement  and  stimulus  should  be  carefully  avoided, 
whether  in  the  way  of  study,  amusement,  or  diet.  Judi 
cious  education  may  do  much  to  mitigate  the  unavoidable 
pains  and  penalties  of  this  most  undesirable  inheritance. 

The  second  class  of  persons  who  need  wisdom  in  the  con 
trol  of  their  moods  is  that  large  class  whose  unfortunate 
circumstances  make  it  impossible  for  them  to  avoid  con 
stantly  overdoing  and  overdrawing  upon  their  nervous  en 
ergies,  and  who  therefore  are  always  exhausted  and  worn  out. 
Poor  souls,  who  labor  daily  under  a  burden  too  heavy  for 
them,  and  whose  fretfulness  and  impatience  are  looked  upon 
with  sorrow,  not  anger,  by  pitying  angels.  Poor  mothers, 
with  families  of  little  children  clinging  round  them,  and  a 
baby  that  never  lets  them  sleep  ;  hard-working  men,  whose 
utmost  toil,  day  and  night,  scarcely  keeps  the  wolf  from  the 
door  ;  and  all  the  hard-laboring,  heavy-laden,  on  whom  the 
burdens  of  life  press  far  beyond  their  strength. 

There  are  but  two  things  we  know  of  for  these,  —  two 
remedies  only  for  the  irritation  that  comes  of  these  ex 
haustions  ;  the  habit  of  silence  towards  men,  and  of  speech 
towards  God.  The  heart  must  utter  itself  or  burst  ;  but 
let  it  learn  to  commune  constantly  and  intimately  with 
One  always  present  and  always  sympathizing.  This  is  the 
great,  the  only  safeguard  against  fretfulness  and  complaint. 
Thus  and  thus  only  can  peace  spring  out  of  confusion,  and 
the  breaking  chords  of  an  overtaxed  nature  be  strung  anew 
to  a  celestial  harmony. 


Ill 

REPRESSION 

I  AM  going  now  to  write  on  another  cause  of  family  unhap- 
piness,  more  subtle  than  either  of  those  before  enumerated. 

In  the  General  Confession  of  the  Church,  we  poor  mor 
tals  all  unite  in  saying  two  things :  "  We  have  left  undone 
those  things  which  we  ought  to  have  done,  and  we  have 
done  those  things  which  we  ought  not  to  have  done."  These 
two  heads  exhaust  the  subject  of  human  frailty. 

It  is  the  things  left  undone  which  we  ought  to  have 
done,  the  things  left  unsaid  which  wre  ought  to  have  said, 
that  constitute  the  subject  I  am  now  to  treat  of. 

I  remember  my  school-day  speculations  over  an  old 
Chemistry  I  used  to  study  as  a  text-book,  which  informed 
me  that  a  substance  called  Caloric  exists  in  all  bodies.  In 
some  it  exists  in  a  latent  state  :  it  is  there,  but  it  affects 
neither  the  senses  nor  the  thermometer.  Certain  causes 
develop  it,  when  it  raises  the  mercury  and  warms  the  hands. 
I  remember  the  awe  and  wonder  with  which,  even  then,  I 
reflected  on  the  vast  amount  of  blind,  deaf,  and  dumb  com 
fort  which  Nature  has  thus  stowed  away.  How  mysterious 
it  seemed  to  me  that  poor  families  every  winter  should  be 
shivering,  freezing,  and  catching  cold,  when  Nature  had  all 
this  latent  caloric  locked  up  in  her  store-closet,  —  when 
it  was  all  around  them,  in  everything  they  touched  and 
handled  ! 

In  the  spiritual  world  there  is  an  exact  analogy  to  this. 
There  is  a  great  life-giving,  warming  power  called  Love, 
which  exists  in  human  hearts  dumb  and  unseen,  but  which 


KEPKESSION  365 

has  no  real  life,  no  warming  power,  till  set  free  by  expres 
sion. 

Did  you  ever,  in  a  raw,  chilly  day,  just  before  a  snow 
storm,  sit  at  work  in  a  room  that  was  judiciously  warmed 
by  an  exact  thermometer  ?  You  do  not  freeze,  but  you 
shiver  ;  your  fingers  do  not  become  numb  with  cold,  but 
you  have  all  the  while  an  uneasy  craving  for  more  positive 
warmth.  You  look  at  the  empty  grate,  walk  mechanically 
towards  it,  and,  suddenly  awaking,  shiver  to  see  that  there 
is  nothing  there.  You  long  for  a  shawl  or  cloak  ;  you  draw 
yourself  within  yourself ;  you  consult  the  thermometer,  and 
are  vexed  to  find  that  there  is  nothing  there  to  be  com 
plained  of,  —  it  is  standing  most  provokingly  at  the  exact 
temperature  that  all  the  good  books  and  good  doctors  pro 
nounce  to  be  the  proper  thing,  —  the  golden  mean  of  health ; 
and  yet  perversely  you  shiver,  and  feel  as  if  the  face  of  an 
open  fire  would  be  to  you  as  the  smile  of  an  angel. 

Such  a  lifelong  chill,  such  an  habitual  shiver,  is  the  lot 
of  many  natures,  which  are  not  warm,  when  all  ordinary 
rules  tell  them  they  ought  to  be  warm,  —  whose  life  is  cold 
and  barren  and  meagre,  —  which  never  see  the  blaze  of  an 
open  fire. 

I  will  illustrate  my  meaning  by  a  page  out  of  my  own 
experience. 

I  was  twenty-one  when  I  stood  as  groomsman  for  my 
youngest  and  favorite  sister  Emily.  I  remember  her  now 
as  she  stood  at  the  altar,  —  a  pale,  sweet,  flowery  face,  in  a 
half-shimmer  between  smiles  and  tears,  looking  out  of  va 
pory  clouds  of  gauze  and  curls  and  all  the  vanishing  mys 
teries  of  a  bridal  morning. 

Everybody  thought  the  marriage  such  a  fortunate  one !  — 
for  her  husband  was  handsome  and  manly,  a  man  of  worth, 
of  principle  good  as  gold  and  solid  as  adamant,  —  and  Emmy 
had  always  been  such  a  flossy  little  kitten  of  a  pet,  so  full 
of  all  sorts  of  impulses,  so  sensitive  and  nervous,  we  thought 


366  LITTLE   FOXES 

her  kind,  strong,  composed,  stately  husband  made  just  on  pur 
pose  for  her.  "  It  was  quite  a  Providence,"  sighed  all  the 
elderly  ladies,  who  sniffed  tenderly,  and  wiped  their  eyes, 
according  to  approved  custom,  during  the  marriage  cere 
mony. 

I  remember  now  the  bustle  of  the  day,  —  the  confused 
whirl  of  white  gloves,  kisses,  bridemaids,  and  bridecakes, 
the  losing  of  trunk  keys  and  breaking  of  lacings,  the  tears 
of  mamma —  God  bless  her  !  —  and  the  jokes  of  irreverent 
Christopher,  who  could  for  the  life  of  him  see  nothing  so 
very  dismal  in  the  whole  phantasmagoria,  and  only  wished 
he  were  as  well  off  himself. 

And  so  Emmy  was  whirled  away  from  us  on  the  bridal 
tour,  when  her  letters  came  back  to  us  almost  every  day, 
just  like  herself,  merry,  frisky  little  bits  of  scratches,  —  as 
full  of  little  nonsense-beads  as  a  glass  of  champagne,  and 
all  ending  with  telling  us  how  perfect  he  was,  and  how 
good,  and  how  well  he  took  care  of  her,  and  how  happy, 
etc.,  etc.  Then  canie  letters  from  her  new  home.  His 
house  was  not  yet  built ;  but  while  it  was  building,  they 
were  to  live  with  his  mother,  who  was  "  such  a  good  wo 
man,"  and  his  sisters,  who  were  also  "  such  nice  women." 

But  somehow,  after  this,  a  change  came  over  Emmy's 
letters.  They  grew  shorter ;  they  seemed  measured  in 
their  words  ;  and  in  place  of  sparkling  nonsense  and  bub 
bling  outbursts  of  glee,  came  anxiously  worded  praises  of 
her  situation  and  surroundings,  evidently  written  for  the 
sake  of  arguing  herself  into  the  belief  that  she  was  extremely 
happy. 

John,  of  course,  was  not  as  much  with  her  now  :  he  had 
his  business  to  attend  to,  which  took  him  away  all  day,  and 
at  night  he  was  very  tired.  Still  he  was  very  good  and 
thoughtful  of  her,  and  how  thankful  she  ought  to  be  ! 
And  his  mother  was  very  good  indeed,  and  did  all  for  her 
that  she  could  reasonably  expect,  —  of  course  she  could  not 


REPRESSION  367 

be  like  her  own  mamma  ;  and  Mary  and  Jane  were  very 
kind,  —  "  in  their  way/'  she  wrote,  but  scratched  it  out, 
and  wrote  over  it,  "  very  kind  indeed."  They  were  the 
best  people  in  the  world,  —  a  great  deal  better  than  she 
was ;  and  she  should  try  to  learn  a  great  deal  from  them. 

"  Poor  little  Em  ! "  I  said  to  myself,  "  I  am  afraid  these 
very  nice  people  are  slowly  freezing  and  starving  her." 
And  so,  as  I  was  going  up  into  the  mountains  for  a  summer 
tour,  I  thought  I  would  accept  some  of  John's  many  invi 
tations  and  stop  a  day  or  two  with  them  on  my  way,  and 
see  how  matters  stood.  John  had  been  known  among  us 
in  college  as  a  taciturn  fellow,  but  good  as  gold.  I  had 
gained  his  friendship  by  a  regular  siege,  carrying  parallel 
after  parallel,  till,  when  I  came  into  the  fort  at  last,  I  found 
the  treasures  worth  taking. 

I  had  little  difficulty  in  finding  Squire  Evans's  house. 
It  was  the  house  of  the  village,  —  a  true,  model,  New  Eng 
land  house,  —  a  square,  roomy,  old-fashioned  mansion,  which 
stood  on  a  hillside,  under  a  group  of  great,  breezy  old  elms, 
whose  wide,  wind-swung  arms  arched  over  it  like  a  leafy 
firmament.  Under  this  bower  the  substantial  white  house, 
with  all  its  window  blinds  closed,  with  its  neat  white  fences 
all  tight  and  trim,  stood  in  its  faultless  green  turfy  yard,  a 
perfect  Pharisee  among  houses.  It  looked  like  a  house  all 
finished,  done,  completed,  labeled,  and  set  on  a  shelf  for 
preservation  j  but,  as  is  usual  with  this  kind  of  edifice  in 
our  dear  New  England,  it  had  not  the  slightest  appearance 
of  being  lived  in,  —  not  a  door  or  window  open,  not  a  wink 
or  blink  of  life  ;  the  only  suspicion  of  human  habitation 
was  the  thin,  pale-blue  smoke  from  the  kitchen-chimney. 

And  now  for  the  people  in  the  house. 

In  making  a  New  England  visit  in  winter,  was  it  ever 
your  fortune  to  be  put  to  sleep  in  the  glacial  spare-cham 
ber,  that  had  been  kept  from  time  immemorial  as  a  refriger 
ator  for  guests,  —  that  room  which  no  ray  of  daily  sunshine 


368  LITTLE   FOXES 

and  daily  living  ever  warms,  whose  blinds  are  closed  the 
whole  year  round,  whose  fireplace  knows  only  the  compli 
mentary  blaze  which  is  kindled  a  few  moments  before  bed 
time  in  an  atmosphere  where  you  can  see  your  breath  ?  Do 
you  remember  the  process  of  getting  warm  in  a  bed  of  most 
faultless  material,  with  linen  sheets  and  pillow-cases,  slip 
pery  and  cold  as  ice  ?  You  did  get  warm  at  last,  but  you 
warmed  your  bed  by  giving  out  all  the  heat  of  your  own 
body. 

Such  are  some  families  where  you  visit.  They  are  of  the 
very  best  quality,  like  your  sheets,  but  so  cold  that  it  takes 
all  the  vitality  you  have  to  get  them  warmed  up  to  the  talk 
ing-point.  You  think,  the  first  hour  after  your  arrival,  that 
they  must  have  heard  some  report  to  your  disadvantage,  or 
that  you  misunderstood  your  letter  of  invitation,  or  that  you 
came  on  the  wrong  day  ;  but  no,  you  find  in  due  course 
that  you  were  invited,  you  were  expected,  and  they  are  do 
ing  for  you  the  best  they  know  how,  and  treating  you  as 
they  suppose  a  guest  ought  to  be  treated. 

If  you  are  a  warm-hearted,  jovial  fellow,  and  go  on  feel 
ing  your  way  discreetly,  you  gradually  thaw  quite  a  little 
place  round  yourself  in  the  domestic  circle,  till,  by  the  time 
you  are  ready  to  leave,  you  really  begin  to  think  it  is  agree 
able  to  stay,  and  resolve  that  you  will  come  again.  They 
are  nice  people ;  they  like  you  ;  at  last  you  have  got  to 
feeling  at  home  with  them. 

Three  months  after,  you  go  to  see  them  again,  when,  lo  ! 
there  you  are,  back  again  just  where  you  were  at  first.  The 
little  spot  which  you  had  thawed  out  is  frozen  over  again, 
and  again  you  spend  all  your  visit  in  thawing  it  and  getting 
your  hosts  limbered  and  in  a  state  for  comfortable  converse. 

The  first  evening  that  I  spent  in  the  wide,  roomy  front- 
parlor,  with  Judge  Evans,  his  wife,  and  daughters,  fully 
accounted  for  the  change  in  Emmy's  letters.  Rooms,  I 
verily  believe,  get  saturated  with  the  aroma  of  their  spirit- 


REPRESSION  369 

ual  atmosphere ;  and  there  are  some  so  stately,  so  correct, 
that  they  would  paralyze  even  the  friskiest  kitten  or  the 
most  impudent  Scotch  terrier.  At  a  glance  you  perceive, 
on  entering,  that  nothing  but  correct  deportment,  an  erect 
posture,  and  strictly  didactic  conversation  is  possible  there. 

The  family,  in  fact,  were  all  eminently  didactic,  bent  on 
improvement,  laboriously  useful.  Not  a  good  work  or 
charitable  enterprise  could  put  forth  its  head  in  the  neigh 
borhood,  of  which  they  were  not  the  support  and  life. 
Judge  Evans  was  the  stay  and  staff  of  the  village  and  town 
ship  of ;  he  bore  up  the  pillars  thereof.  Mrs.  Evans 

was  known  in  the  gates  for  all  the  properties  and  deeds  of 
the  virtuous  woman,  as  set  forth  by  Solomon  ;  the  heart  of 
her  husband  did  safely  trust  in  her.  But  when  I  saw  them, 
that  evening,  sitting,  in  erect  propriety,  in  their  respective 
corners  each  side  of  the  great,  stately  fireplace,  with  its  tall, 
glistening  brass  andirons,  its  mantel  adorned  at  either  end 
with  plated  candlesticks,  with  the  snuffer-tray  in  the  middle, 
—  she  so  collectedly  measuring  her  words,  talking  in  all 
those  well-worn  grooves  of  correct  conversation  which  are 
designed,  as  the  phrase  goes,  to  "  entertain  strangers,"  and 
the  Misses  Evans,  in  the  best  of  grammar  and  rhetoric,  and 
in  most  proper  time  and  way  possible,  showing  themselves 
for  what  they  were,  most  high-principled,  well-informed, 
intelligent  women,  —  I  set  myself  to  speculate  on  the  cause 
of  the  extraordinary  sensation  of  stiffness  and  restraint 
which  pervaded  me,  as  if  I  had  been  dipped  in  some  petrify 
ing  spring  and  was  beginning  to  feel  myself  slightly  crust 
ing  over  on  the  exterior. 

This  kind  of  conversation  is  such  as  admits  quite  easily 
of  one's  carrying  on  another  course  of  thought  within  ;  and 
so,  as  I  found  myself  like  a  machine,  striking  in  now  and 
then  in  good  time  and  tune,  I  looked  at  Judge  Evans,  sit 
ting  there  so  serene,  self-poised,  and  cold,  and  began  to  won 
der  if  he  had  ever  been  a  boy,  a  young  man,  —  if  Mrs. 


370  LITTLE  FOXES 

Evans  ever  was  a  girl,  —  if  he  was  ever  in  love  with  her, 
and  what  he  did  when  he  was. 

I  thought  of  the  lock  of  Emmy's  hair  which  I  had  ob 
served  in  John's  writing-desk  in  days  when  he  was  falling 
in  love  with  her,  —  of  sundry  little  movements  in  which 
at  awkward  moments  I  had  detected  my  grave  and  serious 
gentleman  when  I  had  stumbled  accidentally  upon  the  pair 
in  moonlight  strolls  or  retired  corners,  —  and  wondered 
whether  the  models  of  propriety  before  me  had  ever  been 
convicted  of  any  such  human  weaknesses.  Now,  to  be 
sure,  I  could  as  soon  imagine  the  stately  tongs  to  walk  up 
and  kiss  the  shovel  as  conceive  of  any  such  bygone  effusion 
in  those  dignified  individuals.  But  how  did  they  get  ac 
quainted  ?  how  came  they  ever  to  be  married  ? 

I  looked  at  John,  and  thought  I  saw  him  gradually  stiff 
ening  and  subsiding  into  the  very  image  of  his  father. 
As  near  as  a  young  fellow  of  twenty-five  can  resemble  an 
old  one  of  sixty-two,  he  was  growing  to  be  exactly  like  him, 
with  the  same  upright  carriage,  the  same  silence  and  reserve. 
Then  I  looked  at  Emmy :  she,  too,  was  changed,  —  she, 
the  wild  little  pet,  all  of  whose  pretty  individualities  were 
dear  to  us,  —  that  little  unpunctuated  scrap  of  life's  poetry, 
full  of  little  exceptions  referable  to  no  exact  rule,  only  to 
be  tolerated  under  the  wide  score  of  poetic  license.  Now, 
as  she  sat  between  the  two  Misses  Evans,  I  thought  I  could 
detect  a  bored,  anxious  expression  on  her  little  mobile  face, 
—  an  involuntary  watchfulness  and  self-consciousness,  as  if 
she  were  trying  to  be  good  on  some  quite  new  pattern. 
She  seemed  nervous  about  some  of  my  jokes,  and  her  eye 
went  apprehensively  to  her  mother-in-law  in  the  corner; 
she  tried  hard  to  laugh  and  make  things  go  merrily  for  me ; 
she  seemed  sometimes  to  look  an  apology  for  me  to  them, 
and  then  again  for  them  to  me.  For  myself,  I  felt  that 
perverse  inclination  to  shock  people  which  sometimes  comes 
over  one  in  such  situations.  I  had  a  great  mind  to  draw 


REPRESSION  371 

Emmy  on  to  my  knee  and  commence  a  brotherly  romp  with 
her,  to  give  John  a  thump  on  his  very  upright  back,  and 
to  propose  to  one  of  the  Misses  Evans  to  strike  up  a  waltz, 
and  get  the  parlor  into  a  general  whirl,  before  the  very  face 
and  eyes  of  propriety  in  the  corner :  but  "  the  spirits  "  were 
too  strong  for  me ;  I  could  n't  do  it. 

I  remembered  the  innocent,  saucy  freedom  with  which 
Emmy  used  to  treat  her  John  in  the  days  of  their  engage- 
men  t?  —  the  little  ways,  half  loving,  half  mischievous,  in 
which  she  alternately  petted  and  domineered  over  him. 
Now  she  called  him  "  Mr.  Evans,"  with  an  anxious  affecta 
tion  of  matronly  gravity.  Had  they  been  lecturing  her  into 
these  conjugal  proprieties  ?  Probably  not.  I  felt  sure,  by 
what  I  now  experienced  in  myself,  that,  were  I  to  live  in 
that  family  one  week,  all  deviations  from  the  one  accepted 
pattern  of  propriety  would  fall  off,  like  many-colored  sumach 
leaves  after  the  first  hard  frost.  I  began  to  feel  myself 
slowly  stiffening,  my  courage  getting  gently  chilly.  I  tried 
to  tell  a  story,  but  had  to  mangle  it  greatly,  because  I  felt 
in  the  air  around  me  that  parts  of  it  were  too  vernacular 
and  emphatic ;  and  then,  as  a  man  who  is  freezing  makes 
desperate  efforts  to  throw  off  the  spell,  and  finds  his  brain 
beginning  to  turn,  so  I  was  beginning  to  be  slightly  insane, 
and  was  haunted  with  a  desire  to  say  some  horribly  im 
proper  or  wicked  thing  which  should  start  them  all  out  of 
their  chairs.  Though  never  given  to  profane  expressions,  I 
perfectly  hankered  to  let  out  a  certain  round,  unvarnished, 
wicked  word,  which  I  knew  would  create  a  tremendous  com 
motion  on  the  surface  of  this  enchanted  mill-pond,  —  in 
fact,  I  was  so  afraid  that  I  should  make  some  such  mad 
demonstration,  that  I  rose  at  an  early  hour  and  begged 
leave  to  retire.  Emmy  sprang  up  with  apparent  relief,  and 
offered  to  get  my  candle  and  marshal  me  to  my  room. 

When  she  had  ushered  me  into  the  chilly  hospitality  of 
that  stately  apartment,  she  seemed  suddenly  disenchanted. 


372  LITTLE   FOXES 

She  set  down  the  candle,  ran  to  me,  fell  on  my  neck,  nes 
tled  her  little  head  under  my  coat,  laughing  and  crying, 
and  calling  me  her  dear  old  boy  ;  she  pulled  my  whiskers, 
pinched  my  ear,  rummaged  my  pockets,  danced  round  me  in 
a  sort  of  wild  joy,  stunning  me  with  a  volley  of  questions, 
without  stopping  to  hear  the  answer  to  one  of  them  ;  in  short, 
the  wild  little  elf  of  old  days  seemed  suddenly  to  come  back 
to  me,  as  I  sat  down  and  drew  her  on  to  my  knee. 

"  It  does  look  so  like  home  to  see  you,  Chris  !  —  dear, 
dear  home  !  —  and  the  dear  old  folks  !  There  never,  never 
was  such  a  home !  —  everybody  there  did  just  what  they 
wanted  to,  did  n't  they,  Chris  ?  —  and  we  love  each  other, 
don't  we  ?  " 

"Emmy,"  said  I,  suddenly,  and  very  improperly,  "you 
are  n't  happy  here." 

"  Not  happy  ?  "  she  said,  with  a  half-frightened  look,  — 
f(  what  makes  you  say  so  ?  Oh,  you  are  mistaken.  I 
have  everything  to  make  me  happy.  I  should  be  very  un 
reasonable  and  wicked,  if  I  were  not.  I  am  very,  very 
happy,  I  assure  you.  Of  course,  you  know,  everybody 
can't  be  like  our  folks  at  home.  That  I  should  not  ex 
pect,  you  know,  —  people's  ways  are  different,  —  but  then, 
when  you  know  people  are  so  good,  and  all  that,  why,  of 
course  you  must  be  thankful,  be  happy.  It 's  better  for  me 
to  learn  to  control  my  feelings,  you  know,  and  not  give  way 
to  impulses.  They  are  all  so  good  here,  they  never  give 
way  to  their  feelings,  —  they  always  do  right.  Oh,  they  are 
quite  wonderful !  " 

"  And  agreeable  ?  "  said  I. 

"  0  Chris,  we  must  n't  think  so  much  of  that.  They 
certainly  are  n't  pleasant  and  easy,  as  people  at  home  are ; 
but  they  are  never  cross,  they  never  scold,  they  always  are 
good.  And  we  ought  n't  to  think  so  much  of  living  to  be 
happy  ;  we  ought  to  think  more  of  doing  right,  doing  our 
duty,  don't  you  think  so  ?  " 


REPRESSION  373 

"  All  undeniable  truth,  Emmy  ;  but,  for  all  that,  John 
seems  stiff  as  a  ramrod,  and  their  front-parlor  is  like  a  tomb. 
You  must  n't  let  them  petrify  him.7' 

Her  face  clouded  over  a  little. 

"  John  is  different  here  from  what  he  was  at  our  house. 
He  has  been  brought  up  differently,  —  oh,  entirely  differ 
ently  from  what  we  were ;  and  when  he  comes  back  into 
the  old  house,  the  old  business,  and  the  old  place  between 
his  father  and  mother  and  sisters,  he  goes  back  into  the  old 
ways.  He  loves  me  all  the  same,  but  he  does  not  show  it 
in  the  same  ways,  and  I  must  learn,  you  know,  to  take  it 
on  trust.  He  is  very  busy,  —  works  hard  all  day,  and  all 
for  me ;  and  mother  says  women  are  unreasonable  that  ask 
any  other  proof  of  love  from  their  husbands  than  what  they 
give  by  working  for  them  all  the  time.  She  never  lectures 
me,  but  I  know  she  thought  I  was  a  silly  little  petted  child, 
and  she  told  me  one  day  how  she  brought  up  John.  She 
never  petted  him  ;  she  put  him  away  alone  to  sleep,  from  the 
time  he  was  six  months  old ;  she  never  fed  him  out  of  his 
regular  hours  when  he  was  a  baby,  no  matter  how  much  he 
cried ;  she  never  let  him  talk  baby-talk,  or  have  any  baby- 
talk  talked  to  him,  but  was  very  careful  to  make  him  speak 
all  his  words  plain  from  the  very  first ;  she  never  encouraged 
him  to  express  his  love  by  kisses  or  caresses,  but  taught  him 
that  the  only  proof  of  love  was  exact  obedience.  I  remem 
ber  John's  telling  me  of  his  running  to  her  once  and  hug 
ging  her  round  the  neck,  when  he  had  come  in  without 
wiping  his  shoes,  and  she  took  off  his  arms  and  said  :  {  My 
son,  this  is  n't  the  best  way  to  show  love.  I  should  be 
much  better  pleased  to  have  you  come  in  quietly  and  wipe 
your  shoes  than  to  come  and  kiss  me  when  you  forget  to  do 
what  I  say.' '; 

"  Dreadful  old  jade  !  "  said  I,  irreverently,  being  then 
only  twenty-three. 

"  Now,  Chris,  I  won't  have  anything  to  say  to  you,  if 


374  LITTLE  FOXES 

this  is  the  way  you  are  going  to  talk,"  said  Emily,  pouting, 
though  a  mischievous  gleam  darted  into  her  eyes.  "  Really, 
however,  I  think  she  carried  things  too  far,  though  she  is 
so  good.  I  only  said  it  to  excuse  John,  and  show  how  he 
was  brought  up." 

"Poor  fellow!"  said  I.  "I  know  now  why  he  is  so 
hopelessly  shut  up,  and  walled  up.  Never  a  warmer  heart 
than  he  keeps  stowed  away  there  inside  of  the  fortress,  with 
the  drawbridge  down  and  moat  all  round." 

"  They  are  all  warm  -  hearted  inside,"  said  Emily. 
"  Would  you  think  she  did  n't  love  him  ?  Once  when  he 
was  sick,  she  watched  with  him  seventeen  nights  without 
taking  off  her  clothes  ;  she  scarcely  would  eat  all  the  time  : 
Jane  told  me  so.  She  loves  him  better  than  she  loves  her 
self.  It  7s  perfectly  dreadful  sometimes  to  see  how  intense 
she  is  when  anything  concerns  him  ;  it 's  her  principle  that 
makes  her  so  cold  and  quiet." 

"  And  a  devilish  one  it  is !  "  said  I. 

"  Chris,  you  are  really  growing  wicked !  " 

"I  use  the  word  seriously,  and  in  good  faith,"  said  I. 
"  Who  but  the  Father  of  Evil  ever  devised  such  plans  for 
making  goodness  hateful,  and  keeping  the  most  heavenly 
part  of  our  nature  so  under  lock  and  key  that  for  the  greater 
part  of  our  lives  we  get  no  use  of  it  ?  Of  what  benefit  is 
a  mine  of  love  burning  where  it  warms  nobody,  and  does  no 
thing  but  blister  the  soul  within  with  its  imprisoned  heat  ? 
Love  repressed  grows  morbid,  acts  in  a  thousand  perverse 
ways.  These  three  women,  I  '11  venture  to  say,  are  living  in 
the  family  here  like  three  frozen  islands,  knowing  as  little  of 
each  other's  inner  life  as  if  parted  by  eternal  barriers  of  ice, 
—  and  all  because  a  cursed  principle  in  the  heart  of  the 
mother  has  made  her  bring  them  up  in  violence  to  nature." 

"  Well,"  said  Emmy,  "  sometimes  I  do  pity  Jane ;  she 
is  nearest  my  age,  and,  naturally,  I  think  she  was  something 
like  me,  or  might  have  been.  The  other  day  I  remember 


REPRESSION  375 

her  coming  in  looking  so  flushed  and  ill  that  I  could  n't 
help  asking  if  she  were  unwell.  The  tears  came  into  her 
eyes ;  but  her  mother  looked  up,  in  her  cool,  business-like 
way,  and  said,  in  her  dry  voice,  — 

"  '  Jane,  what 's  the  matter  ?  ' 

" { Oh,  my  head  aches  dreadfully,  and  I  have  pains  in  all 
my  limbs ! ' 

"  I  wanted  to  jump  and  run  to  do  something  for  her,  — 
you  know  at  our  house  we  feel  that  a  sick  person  must  be 
waited  on,  —  but  her  mother  only  said,  in  the  same  dry 
way,— 

"  '  Well,  Jane,  you  7ve  probably  got  a  cold ;  go  into  the 
kitchen  and  make  yourself  some  good  boneset  tea,  soak  your 
feet  in  hot  water,  and  go  to  bed  at  once ;  "  and  Jane  meekly 
departed. 

"  I  wanted  to  spring  and  do  these  things  for  her ;  but 
it 's  curious,  in  this  house  I  never  dare  offer  to  do  anything  ; 
and  mother  looked  at  me,  as  she  went  out,  with  a  significant 
nod,  — 

"  '  That's  always  my  way  ;  if  any  of  the  children  are  sick, 
I  never  coddle  them  ;  it 's  best  to  teach  them  to  make  as 
light  of  it  as  possible.'  " 

"  Dreadful !  »  said  I. 

"  Yes,  it  is  dreadful,"  said  Emmy,  drawing  her  breath, 
as  if  relieved  that  she  might  speak  her  mind  ;  "  it 's  dreadful 
to  see  these  people,  who  I  know  love  each  other,  living  side 
by  side  and  never  saying  a  loving,  tender  word,  never  doing 
a  little  loving  thing,  —  sick  ones  crawling  off  alone  like  sick 
animals,  persisting  in  being  alone,  bearing  everything  alone. 
But  I  won't  let  them  ;  I  will  insist  on  forcing  my  way  into 
their  rooms.  I  would  go  and  sit  with  Jane,  and  pet  her 
and  hold  her  hand  and  bathe  her  head,  though  I  knew  it 
made  her  horridly  uncomfortable  at  first ;  but  I  thought  she 
ought  to  learn  to  be  petted  in  a  Christian  way,  when  she 
was  sick.  I  will  kiss  her  too,  sometimes,  though  she  takes 


376  LITTLE  FOXES 

it  just  like  a  cat  that  is  n't  used  to  being  stroked,  and  calls 
me  a  silly  girl ;  but  I  know  she  is  getting  to  like  it.  What 
is  the  use  of  people's  loving  each  other  in  this  horridly  cold, 
stingy,  silent  way  ?  If  one  of  them  were  dangerously  ill 
now,  or  met  with  any  serious  accident,  I  know  there  would 
be  no  end  to  what  the  others  would  do  for  her ;  if  one  of 
them  were  to  die,  the  others  would  be  perfectly  crushed : 
but  it  would  all  go  inward,  —  drop  silently  down  into  that 
dark,  cold,  frozen  well ;  they  could  n't  speak  to  each  other ; 
they  could  n't  comfort  each  other ;  they  have  lost  the  power 
of  expression ;  they  absolutely  can't." 

"  Yes,"  said  I,  "  they  are  like  the  fakirs  who  have  held 
up  an  arm  till  it  has  become  stiffened,  — they  cannot  now 
change  its  position ;  like  the  poor  mutes,  who,  being  deaf, 
have  become  dumb  through  disuse  of  the  organs  of  speech. 
Their  education  has  been  like  those  iron  suits  of  armor 
into  which  little  boys  were  put  in  the  Middle  Ages,  solid, 
inflexible,  put  on  in  childhood,  enlarged  with  every  year's 
growth,  till  the  warm  human  frame  fitted  the  mould  as  if 
it  had  been  melted  and  poured  into  it.  A  person  educated 
in  this  way  is  hopelessly  crippled,  never  will  be  what  he 
might  have  been." 

"  Oh,  don't  say  that,  Chris ;  think  of  John  ;  think  how 
good  he  is." 

"  I  do  think  how  good  he  is,"  —  with  indignation,  — 
"  and  how  few  know  it,  too.  I  think,  that,  with  the  tender- 
est,  truest,  gentlest  heart,  the  utmost  appreciation  of  human 
friendship,  he  has  passed  in  the  world  for  a  cold,  proud, 
selfish  man.  If  your  frank,  impulsive,  incisive  nature  had 
not  unlocked  gates  and  opened  doors,  he  would  never  have 
known  the  love  of  woman  :  and  now  he  is  but  half  disen 
chanted  ;  he  every  day  tends  to  go  back  to  stone." 

"  But  I  sha'n't  let  him ;  oh,  indeed,  I  know  the  danger ! 
I  shall  bring  him  out.  I  shall  work  on  them  all.  I  know 
they  are  beginning  to  love  me  a  good  deal :  in  the  first 


REPRESSION  377 

place,  because  I  belong  to  John,  and  everything  belonging 
to  him  is  perfect ;  and  in  the  second  place  "  — 

"  In  the  second  place,  because  they  expect  to  weave, 
day  after  day,  the  fine  cobweb  lines  of  their  cold  system  of 
repression  around  you,  which  will  harden  and  harden,  and 
tighten  and  tighten,  till  you  are  as  stiff  and  shrouded  as  any 
of  them.  You  remind  me  of  our  poor  little  duck  :  don't 
you  remember  him  !  " 

"  Yes,  poor  fellow !  how  he  would  stay  out,  and  swim 
round  and  round,  while  the  pond  kept  freezing  and  freezing, 
and  his  swimming-place  grew  smaller  and  smaller  every 
day  ;  but  he  was  such  a  plucky  little  fellow  that  "  — 

"  That  at  last  we  found  him  one  morning  frozen  tight 
in,  and  he  has  limped  ever  since  on  his  poor  feet.'7 

"  Oh,  but  I  won't  freeze  in,"  she  said  laughing. 

"  Take  care,  Emmy  !  You  are  sensitive,  approbative,  del 
icately  organized ;  your  whole  nature  inclines  you  to  give  way 
and  yield  to  the  nature  of  those  around  you.  One  little 
lone  duck  such  as  you,  however  warm-blooded,  light-hearted, 
cannot  keep  a  whole  pond  from  freezing.  While  you  have 
any  influence,  you  must  use  it  all  to  get  John  away  from 
these  surroundings,  where  you  can  have  him  to  yourself." 

"  Oh,  you  know  we  are  building  our  house ;  we  shall  go 
to  housekeeping  soon." 

"  Where  ?  Close  by,  under  the  very  guns  of  this  for 
tress,  where  all  your  housekeeping,  all  your  little  manage 
ment,  will  be  subject  to  daily  inspection." 

"  But  mamma  never  interferes,  never  advises,  —  unless  I 
ask  advice." 

"  No,  but  she  influences ;  she  lives,  she  looks,  she  is 
there  ;  and  while  she  is  there,  and  while  your  home  is 
within  a  stone's  throw,  the  old  spell  will  be  on  your  hus 
band,  on  your  children,  if  you  have  any ;  you  will  feel  it  in 
the  air ;  it  will  constrain,  it  will  sway  you,  it  will  rule  your 
house,  it  will  bring  up  your  children." 


378  LITTLE   FOXES 

"  Oh,  no  !  never  !  never  !  I  never  could  !  I  never  will ! 
If  God  should  give  me  a  dear  little  child,  I  will  not  let  it 
grow  up  in  these  hateful  ways  !  " 

"  Then,  Emmy,  there  will  be  a  constant,  still  undefined, 
but  real  friction  of  your  life-power  from  the  silent  grating 
of  your  wishes  and  feelings  on  the  cold,  positive  millstone 
of  their  opinion ;  it  will  be  a  life-battle  with  a  quiet,  in 
visible,  pervading  spirit,  who  will  never  show  himself  in 
fair  fight,  but  who  will  be  around  you  in  the  very  air  you 
breathe,  at  your  pillow  when  you  lie  down  and  when  you 
rise.  There  is  so  much  in  these  friends  of  yours,  noble, 
wise,  severely  good,  —  their  aims  are  so  high,  their  efficiency 
so  great,  their  virtues  so  many,  —  that  they  will  act  upon 
you  with  the  force  of  a  conscience,  subduing,  drawing,  in 
sensibly  constraining  you  into  their  moulds.  They  have 
stronger  wills,  stronger  natures  than  yours;  and  between 
the  two  forces  of  your  own  nature  and  theirs  you  will  be 
always  oscillating,  so  that  you  will  never  show  what  you 
can  do,  working  either  in  your  own  way  or  yet  in  theirs  : 
your  life  will  be  a  failure." 

"  0  Chris,  why  do  you  discourage  me  ?  " 

"  I  am  trying  tonic  treatment,  Emily  ;  I  am  showing  you 
a  real  danger ;  I  am  rousing  you  to  flee  from  it.  John  is 
making  money  fast ;  there  is  no  reason  why  he  should  always 
remain  buried  in  this  town.  Use  your  influence  as  they  do, 
—  daily,  hourly,  constantly,  —  to  predispose  him  to  take 
you  to  another  sphere.  Do  not  always  shrink  and  yield  ; 
do  not  conceal  and  dissimulate  and  endeavor  to  persuade 
him  and  yourself  that  you  are  happy  ;  do  not  put  the  very 
best  face  to  him  on  it  all ;  do  not  tolerate  his  relapses  daily 
and  hourly  into  his  habitual,  cold,  inexpressive  manner ;  and 
don't  lay  aside  your  own  little  impulsive,  outspoken  ways. 
Respect  your  own  nature,  and  assert  it ;  woo  him,  argue 
with  him  ;  use  all  a  woman's  weapons  to  keep  him  from  fall 
ing  back  into  the  old  Castle  Doubting  where  he  lived  till 


REPRESSION  379 

you  let  him  out.  Dispute  your  mother's  hateful  dogma, 
that  love  is  to  be  taken  for  granted  without  daily  proof  be 
tween  lovers  ;  cry  down  latent  caloric  in  the  market ;  insist 
that  the  mere  fact  of  being  a  wife  is  not  enough,  — that 
the  words  spoken  once,  years  ago,  are  not  enough,  —  that 
love  needs  new  leaves  every  summer  of  life,  as  much  as 
your  elm-trees,  and  new  branches  to  grow  broader  and  wider, 
and  new  flowers  at  the  root  to  cover  the  ground.'7 

"  Oh,  but  I  have  heard  that  there  is  no  surer  way  to  lose 
love  than  to  be  exacting,  and  that  it  never  comes  for  a 
woman's  reproaches." 

"  All  true  as  gospel,  Emmy.  I  am  not  speaking  of  re 
proaches,  or  of  unreasonable  self-assertion,  or  of  ill-temper, 
—  you  could  not  use  any  of  these  forces,  if  you  would,  you 
poor  little  chick  !  I  am  speaking  now  of  the  highest  duty 
we  owe  our  friends,  the  noblest,  the  most  sacred,  —  that  of 
keeping  their  own  nobleness,  goodness,  pure  and  incorrupt. 
Thoughtless,  instinctive,  unreasoning  love  and  self-sacrifice, 
such  as  many  women  long  to  bestow  on  husband  and  chil 
dren,  soil  and  lower  the  very  objects  of  their  love.  You 
may  grow  saintly  by  self-sacrifice  ;  but  do  your  husband  and 
children  grow  saintly  by  accepting  it  without  return  ?  I 
have  seen  a  verse  which  says,  — 

"  '  They  who  kneel  at  woman's  shrine 
Breathe  on  it  as  they  bow.' 

Is  not  this  true  of  all  unreasoning  love  and  self-devotion  ? 
If  we  let  our  friend  become  cold  and  selfish  and  exacting 
without  a  remonstrance,  we  are  no  true  lover,  no  true  friend. 
Any  good  man  soon  learns  to  discriminate  between  the  re 
monstrance  that  comes  from  a  woman's  love  to  his  soul, 
her  concern  for  his  honor,  her  anxiety  for  his  moral  devel 
opment,  and  the  pettish  cry  which  comes  from  her  own 
personal  wants.  It  will  be  your  own  fault,  if,  for  lack  of 
anything  you  can  do,  your  husband  relapses  into  these  cold, 
undemonstrative  habits  which  have  robbed  his  life  of  so 


380  LITTLE  FOXES 

much  beauty  and  enjoyment.  These  dead,  barren  ways  of 
living  are  as  Unchristian  as  they  are  disagreeable  ;  and  you, 
as  a  good  little  Christian  sworn  to  fight  heroically  under 
Christ's  banner^  must  make  headway  against  this  sort  of 
family  Antichrist,  though  it  comes  with  a  show  of  supe 
rior  sanctity  and  self-sacrifice.  Remember,  dear,  that  the 
Master's  family  had  its  outward  tokens  of  love  as  well  as 
its  inward  life.  The  beloved  leaned  on  His  bosom  ;  and 
the  traitor  could  not  have  had  a  sign  for  his  treachery,  had 
there  not  been  a  daily  kiss  at  meeting  and  parting  with  His 
children." 

"  I  am  glad  you  have  said  all  this,"  said  Emily,  "  be 
cause  now  I  feel  stronger  for  it.  It  does  not  now  seem 
so  selfish  for  me  to  want  what  it  is  better  for  John  to  give. 
Yes,  I  must  seek  what  will  be  best  for  him." 

And  so  the  little  one,  put  on  the  track  of  self-sacrifice, 
began  to  see  her  way  clearer,  as  many  little  women  of  her 
sort  do.  Make  them  look  on  self-assertion  as  one  form  of 
martyrdom,  and  they  will  come  into  it. 

But,  for  all  my  eloquence  on  this  evening,  the  house  was 
built  in  the  selfsame  spot  as  projected ;  and  the  family  life 
went  on,  under  the  shadow  of  Judge  Evans's  elms,  much  as 
if  I  had  not  spoken.  Emmy  became  mother  of  two  fine, 
lovely  boys,  and  waxed  dimmer  and  fainter ;  while  with 
her  physical  decay  came  increasing  need  of  the  rule  in  the 
household  of  mamma  and  sisters,  who  took  her  up  energeti 
cally  on  eagles'  wings,  and  kept  her  house,  and  managed 
her  children  :  for  what  can  be  done  when  a  woman  hovers 
half  her  time  between  life  and  death  ? 

At  last  I  spoke  out  to  John,  that  the  climate  and  atmos 
phere  were  too  severe  for  her  who  had  became  so  dear  to 
him,  —  to  them  all  ;  and  then  they  consented  that  the 
change  much  talked  of  and  urged,  but  always  opposed  by 
the  parents,  should  be  made. 

John  bought  a  pretty  cottage  in   our  neighborhood,  and 


KEPEESSION  381 

brought  his  wife  and  boys ;  and  the  effect  of  change  of 
.moral  atmosphere  verified  all  my  predictions.  In  a  year 
we  had  our  own  blooming,  joyous,  impulsive  little  Emily 
once  more,  —  full  of  life,  full  of  cheer,  full  of  energy, 
looking  to  the  ways  of  her  household,  the  merry  com 
panion  of  her  growing  boys,  the  blithe  empress  over  her 
husband,  who  took  to  her  genial  sway  as  in  the  old  happy 
days  of  courtship.  The  nightmare  was  past,  and  John  was 
as  joyous  as  any  of  us  in  his  freedom.  As  Emmy  said, 
he  was  turned  right  side  out  for  life ;  and  we  all  admired 
the  pattern.  And  that  is  the  end  of  my  story. 

And  now  for  the  moral,  —  and  that  is,  that  life  consists 
of  two  parts,  —  Expression  and  Repression,  —  each  of  which 
has  its  solemn  duties.  To  love,  joy,  hope,  faith,  pity,  belongs 
the  duty  of  expression :  to  anger,  envy,  malice,  revenge,  and 
all  uncharitableness,  belongs  the  duty  of  repression. 

Some  very  religious  and  moral  people  err  by  applying 
repression  to  both  classes  alike.  They  repress  equally  the 
expression  of  love  and  of  hatred,  of  pity  and  of  anger.  Such 
forget  one  great  law,  as  true  in  the  moral  world  as  in  the 
physical,  —  that  repression  lessens  and  deadens.  Twice  or 
thrice  mowing  will  kill  off  the  sturdiest  crop  of  weeds ;  the 
roots  die  for  want  of  expression.  A  compress  on  a  limb  will 
stop  its  growing;  the  surgeon  knows  this,  and  puts  a  tight 
bandage  around  a  tumor ;  but  what  if  we  put  a  tight  bandage 
about  the  heart  and  lungs,  as  some  young  ladies  of  my  ac 
quaintance  do,  —  or  bandage  the  feet,  as  they  do  in  China  ? 
And  what  if  we  bandage  a  nobler  inner  faculty,  and  wrap 
love  in  grave-clothes  ? 

But  again  there  are  others,  and  their  number  is  legion,  — 
perhaps  you  and  I,  reader,  may  know  something  of  it  in 
ourselves,  —  who  have  an  instinctive  habit  of  repression  in 
regard  to  all  that  is  noblest  and  highest  within  them,  which 
they  do  not  feel  in  their  lower  and  more  unworthy  nature. 

It  comes  far  easier  to  scold  our  friend  in  an  angry  moment 


382  LITTLE  FOXES 

than  to  say  how  much  we  love,  honor,  and  esteem  him  in  a 
kindly  mood.  Wrath  and  bitterness  speak  themselves  and 
go  with  their  own  force  ;  love  is  shamefaced,  looks  shyly 
out  of  the  window,  lingers  long  at  the  door-latch. 

How  much  freer  utterance  among  many  good  Christians 
have  anger,  contempt,  and  censoriousness,  than  tenderness 
and  love  !  /  hate  is  said  loud  and  with  all  our  force.  /  love 
is  said  with  a  hesitating  voice  and  blushing  cheek. 

In  an  angry  mood  we  do  an  injury  to  a  loving  heart  with 
good  strong,  free  emphasis ;  but  we  stammer  and  hang  back 
when  our  diviner  nature  tells  us  to  confess  and  ask  pardon. 
Even  when  our  heart  is  broken  with  repentance,  we  haggle 
and  linger  long  before  we  can 

"  Throw  away  the  worser  part  of  it." 

How  many  live  a  stingy  and  niggardly  life  in  regard  to 
their  richest  inward  treasures  !  They  live  with  those  they 
love  dearly,  whom  a  few  more  words  and  deeds  expressive 
of  this  love  would  make  so  much  happier,  richer,  and  better ; 
and  they  cannot,  will  not,  turn  the  key  and  give  it  out. 
People  who  in  their  very  souls  really  do  love,  esteem,  rev 
erence,  almost  worship  each  other,  live  a  barren,  chilly  life 
side  by  side,  busy,  anxious,  preoccupied,  letting  their  love 
go  by  as  a  matter  of  course,  a  last  year's  growth,  with  no 
present  buds  and  blossoms. 

Are  there  not  sons  and  daughters  who  have  parents  living 
with  them  as  angels  unawares,  —  husbands  and  wives,  bro 
thers  and  sisters,  in  whom  the  material  for  a  beautiful  life 
lies  locked  away  in  unfruitful  silence,  —  who  give  time  to 
everything  but  the  cultivation  and  expression  of  mutual 
love? 

The  time  is  coming,  they  think,  in  some  far  future,  when 
they  shall  find  leisure  to  enjoy  each  other,  to  stop  and  rest 
side  by  side,  to  discover  to  each  other  these  hidden  treasures 
which  lie  idle  and  unused.  Alas  !  time  flies  and  death 


KEPRESSION  383 

steals  on,  and  we  reiterate  the  complaint  of  one  in  Scripture, 
—  "It  came  to  pass,  while  thy  servant  was  busy  hither  and 
thither,  the  man  was  gone." 

The  bitterest  tears  shed  over  graves  are  for  words  left 
unsaid  and  deeds  left  undone.  "  She  never  knew  how  I 
loved  her.'7  "  He  never  knew  what  he  was  to  me."  "  I 
always  meant  to  make  more  of  our  friendship."  "I  did 
not  know  what  he  was  to  me  till  he  was  gone."  Such 
words  are  the  poisoned  arrows  which  cruel  Death  shoots 
backward  at  us  from  the  door  of  the  sepulchre. 

How  much  more  we  might  make  of  our  family  life,  of  our 
friendships,  if  every  secret  thought  of  love  blossomed  into 
a  deed !  We  are  not  now  speaking  merely  of  personal 
caresses.  These  may  or  may  not  be  the  best  language  of 
affection.  Many  are  endowed  with  a  delicacy,  a  fastidious 
ness  of  physical  organization,  which  shrinks  away  from  too 
much  of  these,  repelled  and  overpowered.  But  there  are 
words  and  looks  and  little  observances,  thoughtfulnesses, 
watchful  little  attentions,  which  speak  of  love,  which  make 
it  manifest,  and  there  is  scarce  a  family  that  might  not  be 
richer  in  heart-wealth  for  more  of  them. 

It  is  a  mistake  to  suppose  that  relations  must  of  course 
love  each  other  because  they  are  relations.  Love  must  be 
cultivated,  and  can  be  increased  by  judicious  culture,  as 
wild  fruits  may  double  their  bearing  under  the  hand  of  a 
gardener ;  and  love  can  dwindle  and  die  out  by  neglect,  as 
choice  flower-seeds  planted  in  poor  soil  dwindle  and  grow 
single. 

Two  causes  in  our  Anglo-Saxon  nature  prevent  this  easy 
faculty  and  flow  of  expression  which  strike  one  so  pleas 
antly  in  the  Italian  or  the  French  life :  the  dread  of  flat 
tery,  and  a  constitutional  shyness. 

"  I  perfectly  longed  to  tell  So-and-so  how  I  admired  her, 
the  other  day,"  says  Miss  X. 

"  And  why  in  the  world  did  n't  you  tell  her  ?  " 


384  LITTLE   FOXES 

"  Oh,  it  would  seem  like  flattery,  you  know." 

Now,  what  is  flattery  ? 

Flattery  is  insincere  praise  given  from  interested  motives, 
not  the  sincere  utterance  to  a  friend  of  what  we  deem  good 
and  lovely  in  him. 

And  so,  for  fear  of  flattering,  these  dreadfully  sincere 
people  go  on  side  by  side  with  those  they  love  and  admire, 
giving  them  all  the  time  the  impression  of  utter  indifference. 
Parents  are  so  afraid  of  exciting  pride  and  vanity  in  their 
children  by  the  expression  of  their  love  and  approbation, 
that  a  child  sometimes  goes  sad  and  discouraged  by  their 
side,  and  learns  with  surprise,  in  some  chance  way,  that  they 
are  proud  and  fond  of  him.  There  are  times  when  the 
open  expression  of  a  father's  love  would  be  worth  more 
than  church  or  sermon  to  a  boy  ;  and  his  father  cannot 
utter  it,  will  not  show  it. 

The  other  thing  that  represses  the  utterances  of  love  is 
the  characteristic  shyness  of  the  Anglo-Saxon  blood.  Oddly 
enough,  a  race  born  of  two  demonstrative,  outspoken  na 
tions  —  the  German  and  the  French  —  has  an  habitual  re 
serve  that  is  like  neither.  There  is  a  powerlessness  of  utter 
ance  in  our  blood  that  we  should  fight  against,  and  struggle 
outward  towards  expression.  We  can  educate  ourselves  to 
it,  if  we  know  and  feel  the  necessity ;  we  can  make  it  a 
Christian  duty,  not  only  to  love,  but  to  be  loving,  —  not 
only  to  be  true  friends,  but  to  show  ourselves  friendly.  We 
can  make  ourselves  say  the  kind  things  that  rise  in  our 
hearts  and  tremble  back  on  our  lips,  —  do  the  gentle  and 
helpful  deeds  which  we  long  to  do  and  shrink  back  from ; 
and,  little  by  little,  it  will  grow  easier,  —  the  love  spoken 
will  bring  back  the  answer  of  love,  —  the  kind  deed  will 
bring  back  a  kind  deed  in  return,  —  till  the  hearts  in  the 
family-circle,  instead  of  being  so  many  frozen,  icy  islands, 
shall  be  full  of  warm  airs  and  echoing  bird-voices  answering 
back  and  forth  with  a  constant  melody  of  love. 


IV 

PERSISTENCE 

MY  little  foxes  are  interesting  little  beasts ;  and  I  only 
hope  my  reader  will  not  get  tired  of  my  charming  menage 
rie  before  I  have  done  showing  him  their  nice  points.  He 
must  recollect  there  are  seven  of  them,  and  as  yet  we  have 
shown  up  only  three  ;  so  let  him  have  patience. 

As  before  stated,  little  foxes  are  the  little  pet  sins  of  us 
educated  good  Christians,  who  hope  that  we  are  above  and 
far  out  of  sight  of  stealing,  lying,  and  those  other  gross 
evils  against  which  we  pray  every  Sunday,  when  the  Ten 
Commandments  are  read.  They  are  not  generally  considered 
of  dignity  enough  to  be  fired  at  from  the  pulpit ;  they  seem 
to  us  too  trifling  to  be  remembered  in  church  ;  they  are 
like  the  red  spiders  on  plants,  —  too  small  for  the  percep 
tion  of  the  naked  eye,  and  only  to  be  known  by  the  shrivel 
ing  and  dropping  of  leaf  after  leaf  that  ought  to  be  green 
and  flourishing. 

I  have  another  little  fox  in  my  eye,  who  is  most  active 
and  most  mischievous  in  despoiling  the  vines  of  domestic 
happiness,  —  in  fact,  who  has  been  guilty  of  destroying  more 
grapes  than  anybody  knows  of.  His  name  I  find  it  difficult 
to  give  with  exactness.  In  my  enumeration  I  called  him 
Self- Will ;  another  name  for  him  —  perhaps  a  better  one  — 
might  be  Persistence. 

Like  many  another,  this  fault  is  the  overaction  of  a  most 
necessary  and  praiseworthy  quality.  The  power  of  firm 
ness  is  given  to  man  as  the  very  granite  foundation  of  life. 
Without  it  there  would  be  nothing  accomplished ;  all  human 


386  LITTLE   FOXES 

plans  would  be  unstable  as  water  on  an  inclined  plane.  In 
every  well  -  constituted  nature  there  must  be  a  power  of 
tenacity,  a  gift  of  perseverance  of  will ;  and,  that  man  might 
not  be  without  a  foundation  for  so  needful  a  property,  the 
Creator  has  laid  it  in  an  animal  faculty,  which  he  possesses 
in  common  with  the  brutes. 

The  animal  power  of  firmness  is  a  brute  force,  a  matter 
of  brain  and  spinal  cord,  differing  in  different  animals.  The 
force  by  which  a  bulldog  holds  on  to  an  antagonist,  the  per 
sistence  with  which  a  mule  will  plant  his  four  feet  and  set 
himself  against  blows  and  menaces,  are  good  examples  of 
the  pure  animal  phase  of  a  property  which  exists  in  human 
beings,  and  forms  the  foundation  for  that  heroic  endurance, 
for  that  perseverance,  which  carries  on  all  the  great  and  noble 
enterprises  of  life. 

The  domestic  fault  we  speak  of  is  the  wild,  uncultured 
growth  of  this  faculty,  the  instinctive  action  of  firmness  un 
controlled  by  reason  or  conscience,  —  in  common  parlance, 
the  being  "  set  in  one's  way."  It  is  the  animal  instinct 
of  being  "  set  in  one's  way  "  which  we  mean  by  self-will  or 
persistence  ;  and  in  domestic  life  it  does  the  more  mis 
chief  from  its  working  as  an  instinct  unwatched  by  reason 
and  unchallenged  by  conscience. 

In  that  pretty  new  cottage  which  you  see  on  yonder  knoll 
are  a  pair  of  young  people  just  in  the  midst  of  that  happy 
bustle  which  attends  the  formation  of  a  first  home  in  pros 
perous  circumstances,  and  with  all  the  means  of  making  it 
charming  and  agreeable.  Carpenters,  upholsterers,  and  arti 
ficers  await  their  will ;  and  there  remains  for  them  only  the 
pleasant  task  of  arranging  and  determining  where  all  their 
pretty  and  agreeable  things  shall  be  placed.  Our  Hero  and 
Leander  are  decidedly  nice  people,  who  have  been  through 
all  the  proper  stages  of  being  in  love  with  each  other  for 
the  requisite  and  suitable  time.  They  have  written  each 
other  a  letter  every  day  for  two  years,  beginning  with  "  My 


PERSISTENCE  387 

dearest/'  and  ending  with  "  Your  own,"  etc. ;  they  have  sent 
each  other  flowers  and  rings  and  locks  of  hair  ;  they  have 
worn  each  other's  pictures  on  their  hearts  ;  they  have  spent 
hours  and  hours  talking  over  all  subjects  under  the  sun,  and 
are  convinced  that  never  was  there  such  sympathy  of  souls, 
such  unanimity  of  opinion,  such  a  just,  reasonable,  perfect 
foundation  for  mutual  esteem. 

Now  it  is  quite  true  that  people  may  have  a  perfect  agree 
ment  and  sympathy  in  their  higher  intellectual  nature,  — 
may  like  the  same  books,  quote  the  same  poetry,  agree  in 
the  same  principles,  be  united  in  the  same  religion,  —  and 
nevertheless,  when  they  come  together  in  the  simplest  affair 
of  e very-day  business,  may  find  themselves  jarring  and  im 
pinging  upon  each  other  at  every  step,  simply  because  there 
are  to  each  person,  in  respect  of  daily  personal  habits  and 
personal  likes  and  dislikes,  a  thousand  little  individualities 
with  which  reason  has  nothing  to  do,  which  are  not  subjects 
for  the  use  of  logic,  and  to  which  they  never  think  of  ap 
plying  the  power  of  religion,  —  which  can  only  be  set  down 
as  the  positive  ultimate  facts  of  existence  with  two  people. 

Suppose  a  blue-jay  courts  and  wins  and  weds  a  Baltimore 
oriole.  During  courtship  there  may  have  been  delightful 
sympathetic  conversation  on  the  charm  of  being  free  birds, 
the  felicity  of  soaring  in  the  blue  summer  air.  Mr.  Jay 
may  have  been  all  humility  and  all  ecstasy  in  comparing  the 
discordant  screech  of  his  own  note  with  the  warbling  tender 
ness  of  Miss  Oriole.  But,  once  united,  the  two  commence 
business  relations.  He  is  firmly  convinced  that  a  nest  built 
among  the  reeds  of  a  marsh  is  the  only  reasonable  nest  for 
a  bird  ;  she  is  positive  that  she  should  die  there  in  a  month 
of  damp  and  rheumatism.  She  never  heard  of  going  to 
housekeeping  in  anything  but  a  nice  little  pendulous  bag 
swinging  down  from  under  the  branches  of  a  breezy  elm ; 
he  is  sure  he  should  have  water  on  the  brain  before  summer 
was  over,  from  constant  vertigo,  in  such  swaying,  unsteady 


388  LITTLE   FOXES 

quarters,  —  he  would  be  a  sea-sick  blue-jay  on  land,  and  he 
cannot  think  of  it.  She  knows  now  he  does  n't  love  her,  or 
he  never  would  think  of  shutting  her  up  in  an  old  mouldy 
nest  where  she  is  sure  she  shall  have  the  chills  ;  and  he 
knows  she  does  n't  love  him,  or  she  never  would  want  to 
make  him  uncomfortable  all  his  days  by  tilting  and  swinging 
him  about  as  no  decent  bird  ought  to  be  swung.  Both  are 
dead-set  in  their  own  way  and  opinion ;  and  how  is  either 
to  be  convinced  that  the  way  which  seemeth  right  unto  the 
other  is  not  best  ?  Nature  knows  this,  and  therefore,  in  her 
feathered  tribes,  blue-jays  do  not  mate  with  orioles ;  and  so 
bird-housekeeping  goes  on  in  peace. 

But  men  and  women  as  diverse  in  their  physical  tastes 
and  habits  as  blue-jays  and  orioles  are  wooing  and  wedding 
every  day,  and  coming  to  the  business  of  nest-building, 
alias  housekeeping,  with  predilections  as  violent,  and  as  in 
capable  of  any  logical  defense,  as  the  oriole's  partiality  for  a 
swing-nest  and  the  jay's  preference  of  a  nest  among  the 
reeds. 

Our  Hero  and  Leander,  there,  who  are  arranging  their 
cottage  to-day,  are  examples  just  in  point.  They  have  both 
of  them  been  only  children,  —  both  the  idols  of  circles 
where  they  have  been  universally  deferred  to.  Each  in  his 
or  her  own  circle  has  been  looked  up  to  as  a  model  of  good 
taste,  and  of  course  each  has  the  habit  of  exercising  and  in 
dulging  very  distinct  personal  tastes.  They  truly,  deeply 
esteem,  respect,  and  love  each  other,  and  for  the  very  best 
of  reasons,  —  because  there  are  sympathies  of  the  very  high 
est  kind  between  them.  Both  are  generous  and  affectionate, 
—  both  are  highly  cultured  in  intellect  and  taste,  —  both 
are  earnestly  religious ;  and  yet,  with  all  this,  let  me  tell 
you  that  the  first  year  of  their  married  life  will  be  worthy 
to  be  recorded  as  a  year  of  battles.  Yes,  these  friends  so 
true,  these  lovers  so  ardent,  these  individuals  in  themselves 
so  admirable,  cannot  come  into  the  intimate  relations  of  life 


PERSISTENCE  389 

without  an  effervescence  as  great  as  that  of  an  acid  and 
alkali ;  and  it  will  be  impossible  to  decide  which  is  most  in 
fault,  the  acid  or  the  alkali,  both  being,  in  their  way,  of  the 
very  best  quality. 

The  reason  of  it  all  is,  that  both  are  intensely  "  set  in 
their  way,'7  and  the  ways  of  no  two  human  beings  are  alto 
gether  coincident.  Both  of  them  have  the  most  sharply 
denned,  exact  tastes  and  preferences.  In  the  simplest  mat 
ter  both  have  a,  way,  —  an  exact  way,  —  which  seems  to 
be  dear  to  them  as  life's  blood.  In  the  simplest  appetite 
or  taste  they  know  exactly  what  they  want,  and  cannot,  by 
any  argument,  persuasion,  or  coaxing,  be  made  to  want  any 
thing  else. 

For  example,  this  morning  dawns  bright  upon  them,  as 
she,  in  her  tidy  morning  wrapper  and  trimly  laced  boots, 
comes  stepping  over  the  bales  and  boxes  which  are  dis 
charged  on  the  veranda ;  while  he,  for  joy  of  his  new 
acquisition,  can  hardly  let  her  walk  on  her  own  pretty  feet, 
and  is  making  every  fond  excuse  to  lift  her  over  obstacles 
and  carry  her  into  her  new  dwelling  in  triumph. 

Carpets  are  put  down,  the  floors  glow  under  the  hands 
of  obedient  workmen,  and  now  the  furniture  is  being 
wheeled  in. 

"  Put  the  piano  in  the  bow-window,"  says  the  lady. 

"  No,  not  in  the  bow-window,"  says  the  gentleman. 

"  Why,  my  dear,  of  course  it  must  go  in  the  bow- window. 
How  awkward  it  would  look  anywhere  else  !  I  have  al 
ways  seen  pianos  in  bow- windows." 

"My  love,  certainly  you  would  not  think  of  spoiling 
that  beautiful  prospect  from  the  bow-window  by  blocking  it 
up  with  the  piano.  The  proper  place  is  just  here,  in  the 
corner  of  the  room.  Now  try  it." 

"  My  dear,  I  think  it  looks  dreadfully  there ;  it  spoils 
the  appearance  of  the  room." 

"  Well,  for  my  part,  my  love,  I  think  the  appearance  of 


390  LITTLE   FOXES 

the  room  would  be  spoiled,  if  you  filled  up  the  bow-window. 
Think  what  a  lovely  place  that  would  be  to  sit  in !  " 

"  Just  as  if  we  could  n't  sit  there  behind  the  piano,  if  we 
wanted  to  !  "  says  the  lady. 

"  But  then,  how  much  more  ample  and  airy  the  room 
looks  as  you  open  the  door,  and  see  through  the  bow- 
window  down  that  little  glen,  and  that  distant  peep  of  the 
village  spire  !  " 

"  But  I  never  could  be  reconciled  to  the  piano  standing 
in  the  corner  in  that  way,"  says  the  lady.  "  I  insist  upon 
it,  it  ought  to  stand  in  the  bow-window  :  it 's  the  way  mam 
ma's  stands,  and  Aunt  Jane's,  and  Mrs.  Wilcox's;  every 
body  has  their  piano  so." 

"  If  it  comes  to  insisting,"  says  the  gentleman,  "  it  strikes 
me  that  is  a  game  two  can  play  at." 

"Why,  my  dear,  you  know  a  lady's  parlor  is  her  own 
ground." 

"  Not  a  married  lady's  parlor,  I  imagine.  I  believe  it  is 
at  least  equally  her  husband's,  as  he  expects  to  pass  a  good 
portion  of  his  time  there." 

"  But  I  don't  think  you  ought  to  insist  on  an  arrange 
ment  that  really  is  disagreeable  to  me,"  says  the  lady. 

"  And  I  don't  think  you  ought  to  insist  on  an  arrange 
ment  that  is  really  disagreeable  to  me,"  says  the  gentle 
man. 

And  now  Hero's  cheeks  flush,  and  the  spirit  burns 
within,  as  she  says,  — 

"  Well,  if  you  insist  upon  it,  I  suppose  it  must  be  as  you 
say  ;  but  I  shall  never  take  any  pleasure  in  playing  on  it ;  " 
and  Hero  sweeps  from  the  apartment,  leaving  the  victor 
very  unhappy  in  his  conquest. 

He  rushes  after  her,  and  finds  her  up-stairs,  sitting  dis 
consolate  and  weeping  on  a  packing-box. 

"  Now,  Hero,  how  silly  !  Do  have  it  your  own  way. 
I  '11  give  it  up." 


PERSISTENCE  391 

«  No,  —  let  it  be  as  you  say.  I  forgot  that  it  was  a  wife's 
duty  to  submit." 

"  Nonsense,  Hero !  Do  talk  like  a  rational  woman. 
Don't  let  us  quarrel  like  children." 

"  But  it 's  so  evident  that  I  was  in  the  right." 

"  My  dear,  I  cannot  concede  that  you  were  in  the  right ; 
but  I  am  willing  it  should  be  as  you  say." 

"Now  I  perfectly  wonder,  Leander,  that  you  don't  see 
how  awkward  your  way  is.  It  would  make  me  nervous 
every  time  I  came  into  the  room,  and  it  would  be  so  dark 
in  that  corner  that  I  never  could  see  the  notes." 

"  And  I  wonder,  Hero,  that  a  woman  of  your  taste  don't 
see  how  shutting  up  that  bow-window  spoils  the  parlor. 
It 's  the  very  prettiest  feature  of  the  room." 

And  so  round  and  round  they  go,  stating  and  restating 
their  arguments,  both  getting  more  and  more  nervous  and 
combative,  both  declaring  themselves  perfectly  ready  to 
yield  the  point  as  an  oppressive  exaction,  but  to  do  battle 
for  their  own  opinion  as  right  and  reason,  —  the  animal 
instinct  of  self-will  meanwhile  rising  and  rising  and  growing 
stronger  and  stronger  on  both  sides.  But  meanwhile  in  the 
heat  of  argument  some  side-issues  and  personal  reflections 
fly  out  like  splinters  in  the  shivering  of  lances.  He  tells 
her,  in  his  heat,  that  her  notions  are  formed  from  deference 
to  models  in  fashionable  life,  and  that  she  has  no  idea  of 
adaptation,  —  arid  she  tells  him  that  he  is  domineering,  and 
dictatorial,  and  wanting  to  have  everything  his  own  way ; 
and  in  fine,  this  battle  is  fought  off  and  on  through  the 
day  with  occasional  armistices  of  kisses  and  makings-up, 
—  treacherous  truces,  which  are  all  broken  up  by  the  fatal 
words,  "  My  dear,  after  all,  you  must  admit  I  was  in  the 
right,"  which  of  course  is  the  signal  to  fight  the  whole 
battle  over  again. 

One  such  prolonged  struggle  is  the  parent  of  many  lesser 
ones,  —  the  aforenamed  splinters  of  injurious  remark  and 


392  LITTLE   FOXES 

accusation,  which  flew  out  in  the  heat  of  argument,  remain 
ing  and  festering  and  giving  rise  to  nervous  soreness ;  yet, 
where  there  is  at  the  foundation  real,  genuine  love,  and  a 
good  deal  of  it,  the  pleasure  of  making  up  so  balances  the 
pain  of  the  controversy  that  the  two  do  not  perceive  exactly 
what  they  are  doing,  nor  suspect  that  so  deep  and  wide  a 
love  as  theirs  can  be  seriously  affected  by  causes  so  insig 
nificant. 

But  the  cause  of  difficulty  in  both,  the  silent,  unwatched, 
intense  power  of  self-will  in  trifles,  is  all  the  while  precipi 
tating  them  into  new  encounters.  For  example,  in  a  bright 
hour  between  the  showers,  Hero  arranges  for  her  Leander 
a  repast  of  peace  and  good-will,  and  compounds  for  him  a 
salad  which  is  a  chef  d'ceuvre  among  salads.  Leander  is 
also  bright  and  propitious ;  but  after  tasting  the  salad,  he 
pushes  it  silently  away. 

"  My  dear,  you  don't  like  your  salad." 

"  No,  my  dear ;  I  never  eat  anything  with  salad  oil  in 
it." 

"  Not  eat  salad  oil !  How  absurd  !  I  never  heard  of 
a  salad  without  oil."  And  the  lady  looks  disturbed. 

"  But,  my  dear,  as  I  tell  you,  I  never  take  it.  I  prefer 
simple  sugar  and  vinegar." 

"  Sugar  and  vinegar  !  Why,  Leander,  I  'm  astonished  ! 
How  very  bourgeois  !  You  must  really  try  to  like  my 
salad  "  (spoken  in  a  coaxing  tone). 

"  My  dear,  I  never  try  to  like  anything  new.  I  am  sat 
isfied  with  my  old  tastes." 

"  Well,  Leander,  I  must  say  that  is  very  ungracious  and 
disobliging  of  you." 

"  Why  any  more  than  for  you  to  annoy  me  by  forcing 
on  me  what  I  don't  like  ?  " 

"  But  you  would  like  it,  if  you  would  only  try.  People 
never  like  olives  till  they  have  eaten  three  or  four,  and  then 
they  become  passionately  fond  of  them." 


PERSISTENCE  393 

"  Then  I  think  they  are  very  silly  to  go  through  all  that 
trouble,  when  there  are  enough  things  that  they  do  like." 

te  Now,  Leander,  I  don't  think  that  seems  amiable  or 
pleasant  at  all.  I  think  we  ought  to  try  to  accommodate 
ourselves  to  the  tastes  of  our  friends." 

"  Then,  my  dear,  suppose  you  try  to  like  your  salad  with 
sugar  and  vinegar." 

"But  it's  so  gauche  and  unfashionable  !  Did  you  ever 
hear  of  a  salad  made  with  sugar  and  vinegar  on  a  table  in 
good  society  ?  " 

"  My  mother's  table,  I  believe,  was  good  society,  and  I 
learned  to  like  it  there.  The  truth  is,  Hero,  for  a  sensible 
woman,  you  are  too  fond  of  mere  fashionable  and  society 
notions." 

"  Yes,  you  told  me  that  last  week,  and  I  think  it  was 
very  unjust,  — very  unjust,  indeed  "  —  (uttered  with  em 
phasis). 

"  No  more  unjust  than  your  telling  me  that  I  was  dicta 
torial  and  obstinate." 

"  Well,  now,  Leander,  dear,  you  must  confess  that  you 
are  rather  obstinate." 

'•  I  don't  see  the  proof." 

"  You  insist  on  your  own  ways  and  opinions  so,  heaven 
and  earth  won't  turn  you." 

"  Do  I  insist  on  mine  more  than  you  on  yours  ?  " 

"  Certainly,  you  do." 

"  I  don't  think  so." 

Hero  casts  up  her  eyes  and  repeats  with  expression,  — 

"  O,  wad  some  power  the  giftie  gie  us, 
To  see  oursels  as  others  see  us  !  " 

"  Precisely,"  says  Leander.  "  I  would  that  prayer  were 
answered  in  your  case,  my  dear." 

"  I  think  you  take  pleasure  in  provoking  me,"  says  the 
lady. 


394  LITTLE   FOXES 

"  My  dear,  how  silly  and  childish  all  this  is  !  "  says  the 
gentleman.  "  Why  can't  we  let  each  other  alone  ?  " 

"  You  began  it." 

"  No,  my  dear,  begging  your  pardon,  I  did  not." 

"  Certainly,  Leander,  you  did." 

Now  a  conversation  of  this  kind  may  go  on  hour  after 
hour,  as  long  as  the  respective  parties  have  breath  and 
strength,  both  becoming  secretly  more  and  more  "  set  in 
their  way."  On  both  sides  is  the  consciousness  that  they 
might  end  it  at  once  by  a  very  simple  concession. 

She  might  say,  —  "  Well,  dear,  you  shall  always  have 
your  salad  as  you  like  ;  "  and  he  might  say,  —  "  My  dear,  I 
will  try  to  like  your  salad,  if  you  care  much  about  it ;  "  and  if 
either  of  them  would  utter  one  of  these  sentences,  the  other 
would  soon  follow.  Either  would  give  up,  if  the  other 
would  set  the  example ;  but  as  it  is,  they  remind  us  of  no 
thing  so  much  as  two  cows  that  we  have  seen  standing  with 
locked  horns  in  a  meadow,  who  can  neither  advance  nor  re 
cede  an  inch.  It  is  a  mere  deadlock  of  the  animal  instinct 
of  firmness  ;  reason,  conscience,  religion,  have  nothing  to 
do  with  it. 

The  questions  debated  in  this  style  by  our  young  couple 
were  surprisingly  numerous  ;  as,  for  example,  whether  their 
favorite  copy  of  Turner  should  hang  in  the  parlor  or  in  the 
library,  —  whether  their  pet  little  landscape  should  hang 
against  the  wall,  or  be  placed  on  an  easel,  —  whether  the 
bust  of  the  Venus  de  Milos  should  stand  on  the  marble 
table  in  the  hall,  or  on  a  bracket  in  the  library  ;  all  of 
which  points  were  debated  with  a  breadth  of  survey,  a  rich 
ness  of  imagery,  a  vigor  of  discussion,  that  would  be  per 
fectly  astonishing  to  any  one  who  did  not  know  how  much 
two  very  self-willed  argumentative  people  might  find  to  say 
on  any  point  under  heaven.  Everything  in  classical  anti 
quity,  —  everything  in  Kugler's  "Hand-Book  of  Painting," 
—  every  opinion  of  living  artists,  —  besides  questions  social, 


PERSISTENCE  395 

moral,  and  religious,  —  all  mingled  in  the  grand  melee  ; 
because  there  is  nothing  in  creation  that  is  not  somehow 
connected  with  everything  else. 

Dr.  Johnson  has  said,  —  "  There  are  a  thousand  familiar 
disputes  which  reason  never  can  decide ;  questions  that 
elude  investigation,  and  make  logic  ridiculous  ;  cases  where 
something  must  be  done,  and  where  little  can  be  said.'7 

With  all  deference  to  the  great  moralist,  we  must  say 
that  this  statement  argues  a  very  limited  knowledge  of  the 
resources  of  talk  possessed  by  two  very  cultivated  and  very 
self-willed  persons  fairly  pitted  against  each  other  in  prac 
tical  questions  ;  the  logic  may  indeed  be  ridiculous,  but  such 
people  as  our  Hero  and  Leander  find  no  cases  under  the 
sun  where  something  is  to  be  done,  yet  where  little  can  be 
said.  And  these  wretched  wranglings,  this  interminable 
labyrinth  of  petty  disputes,  waste  and  crumble  away  that 
high  ideal  of  truth  and  tenderness,  which  the  real,  deep 
sympathies  and  actual  worth  of  their  characters  entitled 
them  to  form.  Their  married  life  is  not  what  they  ex 
pected  ;  at  times  they  are  startled  by  the  reflection  that 
they  have  somehow  grown  unlovely  to  each  other ;  and  yet, 
if  Leander  goes  away  to  pass  a  week,  and  thinks  of  his  Hero 
in  the  distance,  he  can  compare  no  other  woman  to  her ; 
and  the  days  seem  long  and  the  house  empty  to  Hero  while 
he  is  gone  ;  both  wonder  at  themselves  when  they  look  over 
their  petty  bickerings,  but  neither  knows  exactly  how  to 
catch  the  little  fox  that  spoils  their  vines. 

It  is  astonishing  how  much  we  think  about  ourselves, 
yet  to  how  little  purpose,  —  how  very  clever  people  will 
talk  and  wonder  about  themselves  and  each  other,  and  yet 
go  on,  year  after  year,  not  knowing  how  to  use  either  them 
selves  or  each  other,  —  not  having  as  much  practical  philo 
sophy  in  the  matter  of  their  own  characters  and  that  of 
their  friends  as  they  have  in  respect  of  the  screws  of  their 
gas-fixtures  or  the  management  of  their  water-pipes. 


396  LITTLE  FOXES 

(t  But  I  won't  have  any  such  scenes  with  my  wife,"  says 
Don  Positive.  "  I  won't  marry  one  of  your  clever  women  ; 
they  are  always  positive  and  disagreeable.  I  look  for  a  wife 
of  a  gentle  and  yielding  nature,  that  shall  take  her  opinions 
from  me,  and  accommodate  her  tastes  to  mine."  And  so 
Don  Positive  goes  and  marries  a  pretty  little  pink-and- 
white  concern,  so  lisping  and  soft  and  delicate  that  he  is 
quite  sure  she  cannot  have  a  will  of  her  own.  She  is  the 
moon  of  his  heavens,  to  shine  only  hy  his  reflected  light. 

We  would  advise  our  gentlemen  friends  who  wish  to  en 
joy  the  felicity  of  having  their  own  way,  not  to  try  the  ex 
periment  with  a  pretty  fool ;  for  the  obstinacy  of  cleverness 
and  reason  is  nothing  to  the  obstinacy  of  folly  and  in 
anity. 

Let  our  friend  once  get  in  the  seat  opposite  to  him  at 
table  a  pretty  creature  who  cries  for  the  moon,  and  insists 
that  he  does  n't  love  her  because  he  does  n't  get  it  for  her ; 
and  in  vain  may  he  display  his  superior  knowledge  of  as 
tronomy,  and  prove  to  her  that  the  moon  is  not  to  be  got. 
She  listens  with  her  head  on  one  side,  and  after  he  has 
talked  himself  quite  out  of  breath,  repeats  the  very  same 
sentence  she  began  the  discussion  with,  without  variation 
or  addition. 

If  she  wants  darling  Johnny  taken  away  from  school, 
because  cruel  teachers  will  not  give  up  the  rules  of  the  in 
stitution  for  his  pleasure,  in  vain  does  Don  Positive,  in  the 
most  select  and  superior  English,  enlighten  her  on  the  ne 
cessity  of  habits  of  self-control  and  order  for  a  boy,  —  the 
impossibility  that  a  teacher  should  make  exceptions  for  their 
particular  darling,  —  the  absolute,  perishing  need  that  the 
boy  should  begin  to  do  something.  She  hears  him  all  through, 
and  then  says,  "  I  don't  know  anything  about  that.  I  know 
what  I  want ;  I  want  Johnny  taken  away."  And  so  she 
weeps,  sulks,  storms,  entreats,  lies  awake  nights,  has  long 
fits  of  sick-headache,  —  in  short,  shows  that  a  pretty  animal, 


PERSISTENCE  397 

without  reason  or  cultivation,  can  be,  in  her  way,  quite  as 
formidable  an  antagonist  as  the  most  clever  of  her  sex. 

Leander  can  sometimes  vanquish  his  Hero  in  fair  fight 
by  the  weapons  of  good  logic,  because  she  is  a  woman  capa 
ble  of  appreciating  reason,  and  able  to  feel  the  force  of  the 
considerations  he  adduces  ;  and  when  he  does  vanquish  and 
carry  her  captive  by  his  bow  and  spear,  he  feels  that  he  has 
gained  a  victory  over  no  ignoble  antagonist,  and  he  becomes 
a  hero  in  his  own  eyes.  Though  a  woman  of  much  will, 
still  she  is  a  woman  of  much  reason ;  and  if  he  has  many 
vexations  with  her  pertinacity,  he  is  never  without  hope  in 
her  good  sense ;  but  alas  for  him  whose  wife  has  only  the 
animal  instinct  of  firmness,  without  any  development  of  the 
judgment  or  reasoning  faculties  !  The  conflicts  with  a  wo 
man  whom  a  man  respects  and  admires  are  often  extremely 
trying  ;  but  the  conflicts  with  one  whom  he  cannot  help 
despising,  become  in  the  end  simply  disgusting. 

But  the  inquiry  now  arises,  What  shall  be  done  with  all 
the  questions  Dr.  Johnson  speaks  of,  which  reason  cannot 
decide,  which  elude  investigation,  and  make  logic  ridicu 
lous,  —  cases  where  something  must  be  done,  and  where 
little  can  be  said  ? 

Read  Mrs.  Ellis's  "  Wives  of  England,"  and  you  have 
one  solution  of  the  problem.  The  good  wromen  of  England 
are  there  informed  that  there  is  to  be  no  discussion,  that 
everything  in  the  menage  is  to  follow  the  rule  of  the  lord, 
and  that  the  wife  has  but  one  hope,  namely,  that  grace 
may  be  given  him  to  know  exactly  what  his  own  will  is. 
" L'etat,  c'est  moi,"  is  the  lesson  which  every  English  hus 
band  learns  of  Mrs.  Ellis,  and  we  should  judge  from  the 
pictures  of  English  novels  that  this  "  awful  right  divine  " 
is  insisted  on  in  detail  in  domestic  life. 

Miss  Edge  worth  makes  her  magnificent  General  Claren 
don  talk  about  his  "  commands  "  to  his  accomplished  and 
elegant  wife  ;  and  he  rings  the  parlor-bell  with  such  an  air, 


398  LITTLE  FOXES 

calls  up  and  interrogates  trembling  servants  with  such  awful 
majesty,  and  lays  about  him  generally  in  so  very  military 
and  tremendous  a  style,  that  we  are  not  surprised  that  poor 
little  Cecilia  is  frightened  into  lying,  being  half  out  of  her 
wits  in  terror  of  so  very  martial  a  husband. 

During  his  hours  of  courtship  he  majestically  informs  her 
mother  that  he  never  could  consent  to  receive  as  his  wife 
any  woman  who  has  had  another  attachment ;  and  so  the 
poor  puss,  like  a  naughty  girl,  conceals  a  little  schoolgirl 
flirtation  of  bygone  days,  and  thus  gives  rise  to  most  ago 
nizing  and  tragic  scenes  with  her  terrible  lord,  who  petrifies 
her  one  morning  by  suddenly  drawing  the  bed-curtains  and 
flapping  an  old  love-letter  in  her  eyes,  asking  in  tones  of 
suppressed  thunder,  "  Cecilia,  is  this  your  writing  ?  " 

The  more  modern  female  novelists  of  England  give  us 
representations  of  their  view  of  the  right  divine  no  less  strin 
gent.  In  a  very  popular  story  called  "  Agatha's  Husband," 
the  plot  is  as  follows.  A  man  marries  a  beautiful  girl  with 
a  large  fortune.  Before  the  marriage,  he  discovers  that  his 
brother,  who  has  been  guardian  of  the  estate,  has  fraudu 
lently  squandered  the  property,  so  that  it  can  only  be  re 
trieved  by  the  strictest  economy.  For  the  sake  of  getting 
her  heroine  into  a  situation  to  illustrate  her  moral,  the 
authoress  now  makes  her  hero  give  a  solemn  promise  not  to 
divulge  to  his  wife  or  to  any  human  being  the  fraud  by 
which  she  suffers. 

The  plot  of  the  story  then  proceeds  to  show  how  very 
badly  the  young  wife  behaves  when  her  husband  takes  her 
to  mean  lodgings,  deprives  her  of  wonted  luxuries  and  com 
forts,  and  obstinately  refuses  to  give  any  kind  of  sensible 
reason  for  his  conduct.  Instead  of  looking  up  to  him 
with  blind  faith  and  unquestioning  obedience,  following  his 
directions  without  inquiry,  and  believing  not  only  without 
evidence,  but  against  apparent  evidence,  that  he  is  the  soul 
of  honor  and  wisdom,  this  perverse  Agatha  murmurs,  com- 


PERSISTENCE  399 

plains,  thinks  herself  very  ill-used,  and  occasionally  is  even 
wicked  enough,  in  a  very  mild  way,  to  say  so,  —  whereat 
her  husband  looks  like  a  martyr  and  suffers  in  silence ;  and 
thus  we  are  treated  to  a  volume  of  mutual  distresses,  which 
are  at  last  ended  by  the  truth  coming  out,  the  abused  hus 
band  mounting  the  throne  in  glory,  and  the  penitent  wife 
falling  in  the  dust  at  his  feet,  and  confessing  what  a  wretch 
she  has  been  all  along  to  doubt  him. 

The  authoress  of  "  Jane  Eyre  "  describes  the  process  of 
courtship  in  much  the  same  terms  as  one  would  describe 
the  breaking  of  a  horse.  Shirley  is  contumacious  and  self- 
willed,  and  Moore,  her  lover  and  tutor,  gives  her  "  Le 
Chevaldompte  "  for  a  French  lesson,  as  a  gentle  intimation 
of  the  work  he  has  in  hand  in  paying  her  his  addresses  ; 
and  after  long  struggling  against  his  power,  when  at  last 
she  consents  to  his  love,  he  addresses  her  thus,  under  the 
figure  of  a  very  fierce  leopardess  :  — 

"Tame  or  wild,  fierce  or  subdued,  you  are  mine" 

And  she  responds  :  — 

"  I  am  glad  I  know  my  keeper  and  am  used  to  him. 
Only  his  voice  will  I  follow,  only  his  hand  shall  manage 
me,  only  at  his  feet  will  I  repose." 

The  accomplished  authoress  of  "  Nathalie "  represents 
the  struggles  of  a  young  girl  engaged  to  a  man  far  older  than 
herself,  extremely  dark  and  heroic,  fond  of  behaving  in  a 
very  unaccountable  manner,  and  declaring  nevertheless,  in 
awful  and  mysterious  tones,  that  he  has  such  a  passion  for 
being  believed  in,  that  if  any  one  of  his  friends,  under  the 
most  suspicious  circumstances,  admits  one  doubt  of  his 
honor,  all  will  be  over  between  them  forever. 

After  establishing  his  power  over  Nathalie  fully,  and 
amusing  himself  quietly  for  a  time  with  the  contemplation 
of  her  perplexities  and  anxieties,  he  at  last  unfolds  to  her 
the  mysterious  counsels  of  his  will  by  declaring  to  another 
of  her  lovers,  in  her  presence,  that  he  "  has  the  intention  of 


400  LITTLE   FOXES 

asking  this  young  lady  to  become  his  wife."  During  the 
engagement,  however,  he  contrives  to  disturb  her  tranquillity 
by  insisting  prematurely  on  the  right  divine  of  husbands, 
and,  as  she  proves  fractious,  announces  to  her  that,  much  as 
he  loves  her,  he  sees  no  prospect  of  future  happiness  in  their 
union,  and  that  they  had  better  part. 

The  rest  of  the  story  describes  the  struggles  and  anguish 
of  the  two,  who  pass  through  a  volume  of  distresses,  he 
growing  more  cold,  proud,  severe,  and  misanthropic  than 
ever,  all  of  which  is  supposed  to  be  the  fault  of  naughty 
Miss  Nathalie,  who  might  have  made  a  saint  of  him,  could 
she  only  have  found  her  highest  pleasure  in  letting  him 
have  his  own  way.  Her  conscience  distresses  her  ;  it  is  all 
her  fault ;  at  last,  worn  out  in  the  strife,  she  resolves  to  be 
a  good  girl,  goes  to  his  library,  finds  him  alone,  and,  in 
spite  of  an  insulting  reception,  humbles  herself  at  his  feet, 
gives  up  all  her  naughty  pride,  begs  to  be  allowed  to  wait 
on  him  as  a  handmaid,  and  is  rewarded  by  his  graciously 
announcing,  that,  since  she  will  stay  with  him  at  all  events, 
she  may  stay  as  his  wife ;  and  the  story  leaves  her  in  the 
last  sentence  sitting  in  what  we  are  informed  is  the  only 
true  place  of  happiness  for  a  woman,  at  her  husband's  feet. 

This  is  the  solution  which  the  most  cultivated  women  of 
England  give  of  the  domestic  problem.  According  to  these 
fair  interpreters  of  English  ideas,  the  British  lion  on  his 
own  domestic  hearth,  standing  in  awful  majesty  with  his 
back  to  the  fire  and  his  hands  under  his  coat-tails,  can  be 
supposed  to  have  no  such  disreputable  discussions  as  we 
have  described;  since  his  partner,  as  Miss  Bronte  says,  has 
learned  to  know  her  keeper,  and  her  place  at  his  feet,  and 
can  conceive  no  happiness  so  great  as  hanging  the  picture 
and  setting  the  piano  exactly  as  he  likes. 

Of  course  this  will  be  met  with  a  general  shriek  of  horror 
on  the  part  of  our  fair  republican  friends,  and  an  equally 
general  disclaimer  on  the  part  of  our  American  gentlemen, 


PERSISTENCE  401 

who,  so  far  as  we  know,  would  be  quite  embarrassed  by 
the  idea  of  assuming  any  such  pronounced  position  at  the 
fireside. 

The  genius  of  American  institutions  is  not  towards  a 
display  of  authority.  All  needed  authority  exists  among 
us,  but  exists  silently,  with  as  little  external  manifestation 
as  possible.  Our  President  is  but  a  fellow  citizen,  person 
ally  the  equal  of  other  citizens.  We  obey  him  because  we 
have  chosen  him,  and  because  we  find  it  convenient,  in 
regulating  our  affairs,  to  have  one  final  appeal  and  one 
deciding  voice. 

The  position  in  which  the  Bible  and  the  marriage  ser 
vice  place  the  husband  in  the  family  amounts  to  no  more. 
He  is  the  head  of  the  family  in  all  that  relates  to  its  mate 
rial  interests,  its  legal  relations,  its  honor  and  standing 
in  society ;  and  no  true  woman  who  respects  herself  would 
any  more  hesitate  to  promise  to  yield  to  him  this  position 
and  the  deference  it  implies,  than  an  officer  of  state  to  yield 
to  the  President.  But  because  Mr.  Lincoln  is  officially 
above  Mr.  Seward,  it  does  not  follow  that  there  can  be 
nothing  between  them  but  absolute  command  on  the  one 
part  and  prostrate  submission  on  the  other ;  neither  does  it 
follow,  that  the  superior  claims  in  all  respects  to  regulate 
the  affairs  and  conduct  of  the  inferior.  There  are  still  wide 
spheres  of  individual  freedom,  as  there  are  in  the  case  of 
husband  and  wife ;  and  no  sensible  man  but  would  feel  him 
self  ridiculous  in  entering  another's  proper  sphere  with  the 
voice  of  authority. 

The  inspired  declaration,  that  "  the  husband  is  the  head 
of  the  wife,  even  as  Christ  is  the  head  of  the  Church/7  is 
certainly  to  be  qualified  by  the  evident  points  of  difference 
in  the  subjects  spoken  of.  It  certainly  does  not  mean  that 
any  man  shall  be  invested  with  the  rights  of  omnipotence 
and  omniscience,  but  simply  that  in  the  family  state  he  is 
the  head  and  protector,  even  as  in  the  Church  is  the  Saviour. 


402  LITTLE   FOXES 

It  is  merely  the  announcement  of  a  great  natural  law  of 
society  which  obtains  through  all  the  tribes  and  races  of 
men,  —  a  great  and  obvious  fact  of  human  existence. 

The  silly  and  senseless  reaction  against  this  idea  in  some 
otherwise  sensible  women  is,  I  think,  owing  to  the  kind  of 
extravagances  and  overstatements  to  which  we  have  alluded. 
It  is  as  absurd  to  cavil  at  the  word  obey  in  the  marriage  cere 
mony  as  for  a  military  officer  to  set  himself  against  the  eti 
quette  of  the  army,  or  a  man  to  refuse  the  freeman's  oath. 

Two  young  men  every  way  on  a  footing  of  equality  and 
friendship  may  be  one  of  them  a  battalion-commander  and 
the  other  a  staff-officer.  It  would  be  alike  absurd  for  the 
one  to  take  airs  about  not  obeying  a  man  every  way  his 
equal,  and  for  the  other  to  assume  airs  of  lordly  dictation 
out  of  the  sphere  of  his  military  duties.  The  mooting  of 
the  question  of  marital  authority  between  two  well-bred, 
well-educated  Christian  people  of  the  nineteenth  century  is 
no  less  absurd. 

While  the  husband  has  a  certain  power  confided  to  him 
for  the  support  and  maintenance  of  the  family,  and  for  the 
preservation  of  those  relations  which  involve  its  good  name 
and  well-being  before  the  world,  he  has  no  claim  to  an 
authoritative  exertion  of  will  in  reference  to  the  little  per 
sonal  tastes  and  habits  of  the  inferior.  He  has  no  divine 
right  to  require  that  everything  shall  be  arranged  to  please 
him,  at  the  expense  of  his  wife's  preferences  and  feelings, 
any  more  than  if  he  were  not  the  head  of  the  household. 
In  a  thousand  indifferent  matters  which  do  not  touch  the 
credit  and  respectability  of  the  family,  he  is  just  as  much 
bound  sometimes  to  give  up  his  own  will  and  way  for  the 
comfort  of  his  wife  as  she  is  in  certain  other  matters  to  sub 
mit  to  his  decisions.  In  a  large  number  of  cases  the  hus 
band  and  wife  stand  as  equal  human  beings  before  God,  and 
the  indulgence  of  unchecked  and  inconsiderate  self-will  on 
either  side  is  a  sin. 


PERSISTENCE  403 

It  is  my  serious  belief  that  writings  such  as  we  have 
been  considering  do  harm  both  to  men  and  women,  by  in 
sensibly  inspiring  in  the  one  an  idea  of  a  licensed  preroga 
tive  of  selfishness  and  self-will,  and  in  the  other  an  irra 
tional  and  indiscreet  servility. 

Is  it  any  benefit  to  a  man  to  find  in  the  wife  of  his 
bosom  the  flatterer  of  his  egotism,  the  acquiescent  victim 
of  his  little  selfish  exactions,  to  be  nursed  and  petted  and 
cajoled  in  all  his  faults  and  fault-findings,  and  to  see  every 
body  falling  prostrate  before  his  will  in  the  domestic  circle  ? 
Is  this  the  true  way  to  make  him  a  manly  and  Christ-like 
man  ?  It  is  my  belief  that  many  so-called  good  wives  have 
been  accessory  to  making  their  husbands  very  bad  Chris 
tians. 

However,  then,  the  little  questions  of  difference  in  every 
day  life  are  to  be  disposed  of  between  two  individuals,  it  is 
in  the  worst  possible  taste  and  policy  to  undertake  to  set 
tle  them  by  mere  authority.  All  romance,  all  poetry,  all 
beauty  are  over  forever  with  a  couple  between  whom  the 
struggle  of  mere  authority  has  begun.  No,  there  is  no  way 
out  of  difficulties  of  this  description  but  by  the  application, 
on  both  sides,  of  good  sense  and  religion  to  the  little  differ 
ences  of  life. 

A  little  reflection  will  enable  any  person  to  detect  in 
himself  that  setness  in  trifles  which  is  the  result  of  the  un- 
watched  instinct  of  self-will,  and  to  establish  over  himself 
a  jealous  guardianship. 

Every  man  and  every  woman,  in  their  self-training  and 
self-culture,  should  study  the  art  of  giving  up  in  little 
things  with  a  good  grace.  The  charm  of  polite  society  is 
formed  by  that  sort  of  freedom  and  facility  in  all  the  mem 
bers  of  a  circle  which  makes  each  one  pliable  to  the  influ 
ences  of  the  others,  and  sympathetic  to  slide  into  the  moods 
and  tastes  of  others  without  a  jar. 

In  courteous  and  polished  circles,  there  are  no  stiff  rail- 


404  LITTLE   FOXES 

road  tracks,  cutting  straight  through  everything,  and  grat 
ing  harsh  thunders  all  along  their  course,  but  smooth, 
meandering  streams,  tranquilly  bending  hither  and  thither 
to  every  undulation  of  the  flowery  banks.  What  makes 
the  charm  of  polite  society  would  make  no  less  the  charm 
of  domestic  life  ;  but  it  can  come  only  by  watchfulness  and 
self-discipline  in  each  individual. 

Some  people  have  much  more  to  struggle  with  in  this 
way  than  others.  Nature  has  made  them  precise  and 
exact.  They  are  punctilious  in  their  hours,  rigid  in  their 
habits,  pained  by  any  deviation  from  regular  rule. 

Now  Nature  is  always  perversely  ordering  that  men  and 
women  of  just  this  disposition  should  become  desperately 
enamored  of  their  exact  opposites.  The  man  of  rules  and 
formulas  and  hours  has  his  heart  carried  off  by  a  gay,  care 
less  little  chit,  who  never  knows  the  day  of  the  month, 
tears  up  the  newspaper,  loses  the  door-key,  and  makes  curl 
papers  out  of  the  last  bill ;  or,  per  contra^  our  exact  and 
precise  little  woman,  whose  belongings  are  like  the  waxen 
cells  of  a  bee,  gives  her  heart  to  some  careless  fellow,  who 
enters  her  sanctum  in  muddy  boots,  upsets  all  her  little 
nice  household  divinities  whenever  he  is  going  on  a  hunt 
ing  or  fishing  bout,  and  can  see  no  manner  of  sense  in  the 
discomposure  she  feels  in  the  case. 

What  can  such  couples  do,  if  they  do  not  adopt  the  com 
promise  of  reason  and  sense,  —  if  each  arms  his  or  her  own 
peculiarities  with  the  back  force  of  persistent  self-will,  and 
runs  them  over  the  territories  of  the  other  ? 

A  sensible  man  and  woman,  finding  themselves  thus 
placed,  can  govern  themselves  by  a  just  philosophy,  and, 
instead  of  carrying  on  a  life-battle,  can  modify  their  own 
tastes  and  requirements,  turn  their  eyes  from  traits  which 
do  not  suit  them  to  those  which  do,  resolving,  at  all 
events,  however  reasonable  be  the  taste  or  propensity  which 
they  sacrifice,  to  give  up  all  rather  than  have  domestic 
strife. 


PERSISTENCE  405 

There  is  one  form  which  persistency  takes  that  is  pecu 
liarly  trying  :  I  mean  that  persistency  of  opinion  which 
deems  it  necessary  to  stop  and  raise  an  argument  in  self- 
defense  on  the  slightest  personal  criticism. 

John  tells  his  wife  that  she  is  half  an  hour  late  with  her 
breakfast  this  morning,  and  she  indignantly  denies  it. 

"  But  look  at  my  watch  !  " 

"  Your  watch  is  n't  right." 

"I  set  it  by  railroad  time." 

"  Well,  that  was  a  week  ago  ;  that  watch  of  yours  always 
gains." 

"  No,  my  dear,  you  're  mistaken." 

"  Indeed,  I  'm  not.  Did  I  not  hear  you  telling  Mr. 
B about  it  ?  " 

"  My  dear,  that  was  a  year  ago,  —  before  I  had  it 
cleaned." 

"  How  can  you  say  so,  John  ?  It  was  only  a  month 
ago." 

"  My  dear,  you  are  mistaken." 

And  so  the  contest  goes  on,  each  striving  for  the  last 
word. 

This  love  of  the  last  word  has  made  more  bitterness  in 
families  and  spoiled  more  Christians  than  it  is  worth.  A 
thousand  little  differences  of  this  kind  would  drop  to  the 
ground,  if  either  party  would  let  them  drop.  Suppose  John 
is  mistaken  in  saying  breakfast  is  late,  —  suppose  that  fifty 
of  the  little  criticisms  which  we  make  on  one  another  are 
well  or  ill  founded,  are  they  worth  a  discussion  ?  Are  they 
worth  ill-tempered  words,  such  as  are  almost  sure  to  grow 
out  of  a  discussion  ?  Are  they  worth  throwing  away  peace 
and  love  for  ?  Are  they  worth  the  destruction  of  the  only 
fair  ideal  left  on  earth,  —  a  quiet,  happy  home  ?  Better  let 
the  most  unjust  statements  pass  in  silence  than  risk  one's 
temper  in  a  discussion  upon  them. 

Discussions,  assuming  the  form  of  warm  arguments,  are 


406  LITTLE   FOXES 

never  pleasant  ingredients  of  domestic  life,  never  safe  recre 
ations  between  near  friends.  They  are,  generally  speaking, 
mere  unsuspected  vents  for  self-will,  and  the  cases  are  few 
where  they  do  anything  more  than  to  make  both  parties 
more  positive  in  their  own  way  than  they  were  before. 

A  calm  comparison  of  opposing  views,  a  fair  statement  of 
reasons  on  either  side,  may  be  valuable  ;  but  when  warmth, 
and  heat,  and  love  of  victory,  and  pride  of  opinion  come  in, 
good  temper  and  good  manners  are  too  apt  to  step  out. 

And  now  Christopher,  having  come  to  the  end  of  his 
subject,  pauses  for  a  sentence  to  close  with.  There  are  a 
few  lines  of  a  poet  that  sum  up  so  beautifully  all  he  has 
been  saying  that  he  may  be  pardoned  for  closing  with  them. 

"  Alas !  how  light  a  cause  may  move 
Dissension  between  hearts  that  love; 
Hearts  that  the  world  has  vainly  tried, 
And  sorrow  but  more  closely  tied; 
That  stood  the  storm  when  waves  were  rough, 
Yet  in  a  sunny  hour  fall  off, 
Like  ships  that  have  gone  down  at  sea 
When  heaven  was  all  tranquillity ! 
A  something  light  as  air,  a  look, 
A  word  unkind,  or  wrongly  taken,  — 
O  love  that  tempests  never  shook, 
A  breath,  a  touch  like  this  hath  shaken! 
For  ruder  words  will  soon  rush  in 
To  spread  the  breach  that  words  begin, 
And  eyes  forget  the  gentle  ray 
They  wore  in  courtship's  smiling  day, 
And  voices  lose  the  tone  which  shed 
A  tenderness  round  all  they  said, — 
Till,  fast  declining,  one  by  one, 
The  sweetnesses  of  love  are  gone, 
And  hearts  so  lately  mingled  seem 
Like  broken  clouds,  or  like  the  stream, 
That,  smiling,  left  the  mountain-brow 
As  though  its  waters  ne'er  could  sever, 
Yet,  ere  it  reach  the  plain  below, 
Breaks  into  floods  that  part  forever." 


INTOLERANCE 

"  AND  what  are  you  going  to  preach  about  this  month, 
Mr.  Crowfield  ?  " 

"  I  am  going  to  give  a  sermon  on  Intolerance,  Mrs. 
Crowfield." 

"  Religious  intolerance  ?  " 

"No,  —  domestic  and  family  and  educational  intolerance; 
one  of  the  seven  deadly  sins  on  which  I  am  preaching,  — 
one  of  '  the  foxes.'  ' 

People  are  apt  to  talk  as  if  all  the  intolerance  in  life 
were  got  up  and  expended  in  the  religious  world ;  whereas 
religious  intolerance  is  only  a  small  branch  of  the  radical, 
strong,  all-pervading  intolerance  of  human  nature.  Phy 
sicians  are  quite  as  intolerant  as  theologians.  They  never 
have  had  the  power  of  burning  at  the  stake  for  medical 
opinions,  but  they  certainly  have  shown  the  will.  Politi 
cians  are  intolerant.  Philosophers  are  intolerant,  especially 
those  who  pique  themselves  on  liberal  opinions.  Painters 
and  sculptors  are  intolerant.  And  housekeepers  are  intol 
erant,  virulently  denunciatory  concerning  any  departures 
from  their  particular  domestic  creed. 

Mrs.  Alexander  Exact,  seated  at  her  domestic  altar,  gives 
homilies  on  the  degeneracy  of  modern  housekeeping  equal 
to  the  lamentations  of  Dr.  Holdfast  as  to  the  falling  off 
from  the  good  old  faith. 

"  Don't  tell  me  about  pillow-cases  made  without  felling," 
says  Mrs  Alexander,  "  it 's  slovenly  and  shiftless.  I 


408  LITTLE   FOXES 

would  n't  have  such  a  pillow-case  in  my  house  any  more 
than  I'd  have  vermin.'7 

"  But,"  says  a  trembling  young  housekeeper,  conscious 
of  unfelled  pillow-cases  at  home,  "  don't  you  think,  Mrs. 
Alexander,  that  some  of  these  old  traditions  might  be  dis 
pensed  with  ?  It  really  is  not  necessary  to  do  all  the 
work  that  has  been  done  so  thoroughly  and  exactly,  —  to 
double-stitch  every  wristband,  fell  every  seam,  count  all 
the  threads  of  gathers,  and  take  a  stitch  to  every  gather. 
It  makes  beautiful  sewing,  to  be  sure ;  but  when  a  woman 
has  a  family  of  little  children  and  a  small  income,  if  all 
her  sewing  is  to  be  kept  up  in  this  perfect  style,  she  wears 
her  life  out  in  stitching.  Had  she  not  better  slight  a  lit 
tle,  and  get  air  and  exercise  ?  " 

"  Don't  tell  me  about  air  and  exercise  !  What  did  my 
grandmother  do  ?  Why,  she  did  all  her  own  work,  and 
made  grandfather's  ruffled  shirts  besides,  with  the  finest 
stitching  and  gathers ;  and  she  found  exercise  enough,  I 
warrant  you.  Women  of  this  day  are  miserable,  sickly, 
degenerate  creatures." 

"  But,  my  dear  madam,  look  at  poor  Mrs.  Evans,  over 
the  way,  with  her  pale  face  and  her  eight  little  ones." 

"  Miserable  manager,"  said  Mrs.  Alexander.  "  If  she  ?d 
get  up  at  five  o'clock  the  year  round  as  I  do,  she  'd  find 
time  enough  to  do  things  properly,  and  be  the  better  for 
it." 

"  But,  my  dear  madam,  Mrs.  Evans  is  a  very  delicately 
organized,  nervous  woman." 

"  Nervous  !  Don't  tell  me  !  Every  woman  nowadays  is 
nervous.  She  can't  get  up  in  the  morning,  because  she  's 
nervous.  She  can't  do  her  sewing  decently,  because  she 's 
nervous.  Why,  I  might  have  been  as  nervous  as  she  is, 
if  I  'd  have  petted  and  coddled  myself  as  she  does.  But  I 
get  up  early,  take  a  walk  in  the  fresh  air  of  a  mile  or  so 
before  breakfast,  and  come  home  feeling  the  better  for  it. 


INTOLERANCE  409 

I  do  all  my  own  sewing,  —  never  put  out  a  stitch  ;  and  I 
natter  myself  my  things  are  made  as  they  ought  to  be.  I 
always  make  my  hoys'  shirts  and  Mr.  Exact's,  and  they  are 
made  as  shirts  ought  to  he,  —  and  yet  I  find  plenty  of  time 
for  calling,  shopping,  "business,  and  company.  It  only  re 
quires  management  and  resolution." 

"It  is  perfectly  wonderful,  to  be  sure,  Mrs.  Exact,  to  see 
all  that  you  do ;  but  don't  you  get  very  tired  sometimes  ?  " 

"  No,  not  often.  I  remember,  though,  the  week  before 
last  Christmas,  I  made  and  baked  eighteen  pies  and  ten 
loaves  of  cake  in  one  day,  and  I  was  really  quite  worn  out ; 
but  I  did  n't  give  way  to  it.  I  told  Mr.  Exact  I  thought  it 
would  rest  me  to  take  a  drive  into  New  York  and  attend 
the  Sanitary  Fair ;  and  so  we  did.  I  suppose  Mrs.  Evans 
would  have  thought  she  must  go  to  bed  and  coddle  herself 
for  a  month." 

"  But,  dear  Mrs.  Exact,  when  a  woman  is  kept  awake 
nights  by  crying  babies  "  — 

"  There  's  no  need  of  having  crying  babies  ;  my  babies 
never  cried  ;  it 's  just  as  you  begin  with  children.  I  might 
have  had  to  be  up  and  down  every  hour  of  the  night  with 
mine,  just  as  Mrs.  Evans  does  ;  but  I  knew  better.  I  used 
to  take  'em  up  about  ten  o'clock,  and  feed  and  make  'em 
all  comfortable  ;  and  that  was  the  last  of  'em,  till  I  was 
ready  to  get  up  in  the  morning.  I  never  lost  a  night's 
sleep  with  any  of  mine." 

"Not  when  they  were  teething  ?  " 

"  No.  I  knew  how  to  manage  that.  I  used  to  lanoe 
their  gums  myself,  and  I  never  had  any  trouble  :  it 's  all 
in  management.  I  weaned  'em  all  myself,  too  :  there  's  no 
use  in  having  any  fuss  in  weaning  children." 

"  Mrs.  Exact,  you  are  a  wonderful  manager ;  but  it  would 
be  impossible  to  bring  up  all  babies  so." 

"  You  '11  never  make  me  believe  that :  people  only  need 
to  begin  right.  I  'm  sure  I  ?ve  had  a  trial  of  eight." 


410  INTOLERANCE 

"  But  there  's  that  one  baby  of  Mrs.  Evans's  makes  more 
trouble  than  all  your  eight.  It  cries  every  night  so  that 
somebody  has  to  be  up  walking  with  it ;  it  wears  out  all 
the  nurses,  and  keeps  poor  Mrs.  Evans  sick  all  the  time." 

"  Not  the  least  need  of  it ;  nothing  but  shiftless  man 
agement.  Suppose  I  had  allowed  my  children  to  be  walked 
with  ;  I  might  have  had  terrible  times,  too  ;  but  I  began 
right.  I  set  down  my  foot  that  they  should  lie  still,  and 
they  did  ;  and  if  they  cried,  I  never  lighted  a  candle,  or 
took  'em  up,  or  took  any  kind  of  notice  of  it ;  and  so,  after 
a  little,  they  went  off  to  sleep.  Babies  very  soon  find  out 
where  they  can  take  advantage,  and  where  they  can't.  It 's 
nothing  but  temper  makes  babies  cry  ;  and  if  I  could  n't 
hush  'em  any  other  way,  I  should  give  'em  a  few  good  smart 
slaps,  and  they  would  soon  learn  to  behave  themselves." 

"  But,  dear  Mrs.  Exact,  you  were  a  strong,  healthy  wo 
man,  and  had  strong,  healthy  children." 

"  Well,  is  n't  that  baby  of  Mrs.  Evans's  healthy,  I  want 
to  know  ?  I  'm  sure  it  is  a  great  creature,  and  thrives  and 
grows  fat  as  fast  as  ever  I  saw  a  child.  You  need  n't  tell 
me  anything  is  the  matter  with  that  child  but  temper  and 
its  mother's  coddling  management." 

Now,  in  the  neighborhood  where  she  lives,  Mrs.  Alexan 
der  Exact  is  the  wonderful  woman,  the  Lady  Bountiful,  the 
pattern  female.  Her  cake  never  rises  on  one  side,  or  has  a 
heavy  streak  in  it.  Her  furs  never  get  a  moth  in  them ; 
her  carpets  never  fade  ;  her  sweetmeats  never  ferment ;  her 
servants  never  neglect  their  work ;  her  children  never 
get  things  out  of  order  ;  her  babies  never  cry,  never  keep 
one  awake  o'  nights  ;  and  her  husband  never  in  his  life 
said,  "  My  dear,  there  's  a  button  off  my  shirt."  Flies  never 
infest  her  kitchen,  cockroaches  and  red  ants  never  invade 
her  premises,  a  spider  never  had  time  to  spin  a  web  on  one 
of  her  walls.  Everything  in  her  establishment  is  shining 
with  neatness,  crisp  and  bristling  with  absolute  perfection, 


INTOLERANCE  411 

—  and  it  is  she,  the  ever-up-and-dressed,  unsleeping,  wide 
awake,  omnipresent,  never-tiring  Mrs.  Exact,  that  does  it  all. 

Besides  keeping  her  household  ways  thus  immaculate, 
Mrs.  Exact  is  on  all  sorts  of  charitable  committees,  does  all 
sorts  of  fancy-work  for  fairs ;  and  whatever  she  does  is  done 
perfectly.  She  is  a  most  available,  most  helpful,  most  be 
nevolent  woman,  and  general  society  has  reason  to  rejoice 
in  her  existence. 

But,  for  all  this,  Mrs.  Exact  is  as  intolerant  as  Torque- 
mada  or  a  locomotive-engine.  She  has  her  own  track, 
straight  and  inevitable  ;  her  judgments  and  opinions  cut 
through  society  in  right  lines,  with  all  the  force  of  her  ex 
ample  and  all  the  steam  of  her  energy,  turning  out  neither 
for  the  old  nor  the  young,  the  weak  nor  the  weary.  She 
cannot,  and  she  will  not,  conceive  the  possibility  that  there 
may  be  other  sorts  of  natures  than  her  own,  and  that  other 
kinds  of  natures  must  have  other  ways  of  living  and  doing. 

Good  and  useful  as  she  is,  she  is  terrible  as  an  army  with 
banners  to  her  poor,  harassed,  delicate,  struggling  neighbor 
across  the  way,  who,  in  addition  to  an  aching,  confused  head, 
an  aching  back,  sleepless,  harassed  nights,  and  weary,  sink 
ing  days,  is  burdened  everywhere  and  every  hour  with  the 
thought  that  Mrs.  Exact  thinks  all  her  troubles  are  nothing 
but  poor  management,  and  that  she  might  do  just  like  her, 
if  she  would.  With  very  little  self-confidence  or  self-asser 
tion,  she  is  withered  and  paralyzed  by  this  discouraging 
thought.  Is  it,  then,  her  fault  that  this  never-sleeping  baby 
cries  all  night,  and  that  all  her  children  never  could  and 
.never  would  be  brought  up  by  those  exact  rules  \vhich  she 
hears  of  as  so  efficacious  in  the  household  over  the  way  ? 
The  thought  of  Mrs.  Alexander  Exact  stands  over  her  like 
a  constable ;  the  remembrance  of  her  is  grievous ;  the  burden 
of  her  opinion  is  heavier  than  all  her  other  burdens. 

Now  the  fact  is,  that  Mrs.  Exact  comes  of  a  long-lived, 
strong-backed,  strong-stomached  race,  with  "  limbs  of  British 


412  LITTLE   FOXES 

oak  and  nerves  of  wire.77  The  shadow  of  a  sensation  of 
nervous  pain  or  uneasiness  never  has  been  known  in  her 
family  for  generations,  and  her  judgments  of  poor  little 
Mrs.  Evans  are  about  as  intelligent  as  those  of  a  good  stout 
Shanghai  hen  on  a  humming-bird.  Most  useful  and  com 
fortable,  these  Shanghai  hens,  —  and  very  ornamental,  and 
in  a  small  way  useful,  these  humming-birds  ;  but  let  them 
not  regulate  each  other's  diet,  or  lay  down  schemes  for  each 
other's  housekeeping.  Has  not  one  as  much  right  to  its 
nature  as  the  other  ? 

This  intolerance  of  other  people's  natures  is  one  of  the 
greatest  causes  of  domestic  unhappiness.  The  perfect  house 
holders  are  they  who  make  their  household  rule  so  flexible 
that  all  sorts  of  differing  natures  may  find  room  to  grow  and 
expand  and  express  themselves  without  infringing  upon 
others. 

Some  women  are  endowed  with  a  tact  for  understanding 
human  nature  and  guiding  it.  They  give  a  sense  of  large 
ness  and  freedom ;  they  find  a  place  for  every  one,  see  at 
once  what  every  one  is  good  for,  and  are  inspired  by  Nature 
with  the  happy  wisdom  of  not  wishing  or  asking  of  any 
human  being  more  than  that  human  being  was  made  to  give. 
They  have  the  portion  in  due  season  for  all :  a  bone  for  the 
dog ;  catnip  for  the  cat ;  cuttle-fish  and  hempseed  for  the 
bird ;  a  book  or  review  for  their  bashful  literary  visitor  ; 
lively  gossip  for  thoughtless  Miss  Seventeen ;  knitting  for 
Grandmamma  ;  fishing-rods,  boats,  and  gunpowder,  for 
Young  Restless,  whose  beard  is  just  beginning  to  grow  ;  — 
and  they  never  fall  into  pets  because  the  canary-bird  won't 
relish  the  dog's  bone,  or  the  dog  eat  canary-seed,  or  young 
Miss  Seventeen  read  old  Mr.  Sixty's  review,  or  young  Mas 
ter  Restless  take  delight  in  knitting-work,  or  old  Grand 
mamma  feel  complacency  in  guns  and  gunpowder. 

Again,  there  are  others  who  lay  the  foundations  of  family 
life  so  narrow,  straight,  and  strict,  that  there  is  room  in 


INTOLERANCE  413 

them  only  for  themselves  and  people  exactly  like  them 
selves  ;  and  hence  comes  much  misery. 

A  man  and  woman  come  together  out  of  different  families 
and  races,  often  united  by  only  one  or  two  sympathies,  with 
many  differences.  Their  first  wisdom  would  be  to  find  out 
each  other's  nature,  and  accommodate  to  it  as  a  fixed  fact ; 
instead  of  which,  how  many  spend  their  lives  in  a  blind 
fight  with  an  opposite  nature,  as  good  as  their  own  in  its 
way,  but  not  capable  of  meeting  their  requirements. 

A  woman  trained  in  an  exact,  thriving,  business  family, 
where  her  father  and  brothers  bore  everything  along  with 
true  worldly  skill  and  energy,  falls  in  love  with  a  literary 
man,  who  knows  nothing  of  affairs,  whose  life  is  in  his 
library  and  his  pen.  Shall  she  vex  and  torment  herself 
and  him  because  he  is  not  a  business  man  ?  Shall  she 
constantly  hold  up  to  him  the  example  of  her  father  and 
brothers,  and  how  they  would  manage  in  this  and  that  case  ? 
or  shall  she  say  cheerily  and  once  for  all  to  herself,  —  "  My 
husband  has  no  talent  for  business  ;  that  is  not  his  forte ; 
but  then  he  has  talents  far  more  interesting :  I  cannot  have 
everything ;  let  him  go  on  undisturbed,  and  do  what  he  can 
do  well,  and  let  me  try  to  make  up  for  what  he  cannot 
do ;  and  if  there  be  disabilities  come  on  us  in  consequence 
of  what  we  neither  of  us  can  do,  let  us  both  take  them 
cheerfully  "  ? 

In  the  same  manner  a  man  takes  out  of  the  bosom  of  an 
adoring  family  one  of  those  delicate,  petted  singing-birds 
that  seem  to  be  created  simply  to  adorn  life  and  make  it 
charming.  Is  it  fair,  after  he  has  got  her,  to  compare  her 
housekeeping,  and  her  efficiency  and  capability  in  the  ma 
terial  part  of  life,  with  those  of  his  mother  and  sisters,  who 
are  strong-limbed,  practical  women,  that  have  never  thought 
about  anything  but  housekeeping  from  their  cradle  ?  Shall 
he  all  the  while  vex  himself  and  her  with  the  remembrance 
of  how  his  mother  used  to  get  up  at  five  o'clock  and  arrange 


414  LITTLE   FOXES 

all  the  business  of  the  day,  —  how  she  kept  all  the  accounts, 
—  how  she  saw  to  everything  and  settled  everything,  — 
how  there  never  were  break-downs  or  irregularities  in  her 
system  ? 

This  would  be  unfair.  If  a  man  wanted  such  a  house 
keeper,  why  did  he  not  get  one  ?  There  were  plenty  of 
single  women,  who  understood  washing,  ironing,  clear 
starching,  cooking,  and  general  housekeeping,  better  than 
the  little  canary-bird  which  he  fell  in  love  with,  and  wanted 
for  her  plumage  and  her  song,  for  her  merry  tricks,  for  her 
bright  eyes  and  pretty  ways.  Now  he  has  got  his  bird,  let 
him  keep  it  as  something  fine  and  precious,  to  be  cared  for 
and  watched  over,  and  treated  according  to  the  laws  of  its 
frail  and  delicate  nature  ;  and  so  treating  it,  he  may  many 
years  keep  the  charms  which  first  won  his  heart.  He  may 
find,  too,  if  he  watches  and  is  careful,  that  a  humming-bird 
can,  in  its  own  small,  dainty  way,  build  a  nest  as  efficiently 
as  a  turkey-gobbler,  and  hatch  her  eggs  and  bring  up  her 
young  in  humming-bird  fashion  ;  but  to  do  it,  she  must  be 
left  unfrightened  and  undisturbed. 

But  the  evils  of  domestic  intolerance  increase  with  the 
birth  of  children.  As  parents  come  together  out  of  different 
families  with  ill-assorted  peculiarities,  so  children  are  born 
to  them  with  natures  differing  from  their  own  and  from  each 
other. 

The  parents  seize  on  their  first  new  child  as  a  piece  of 
special  property  which  they  are  forthwith  to  turn  to  their 
own  account.  The  poor  little  waif,  just  drifted  on  the 
shores  of  Time,  has  perhaps  folded  up  in  it  a  character  as 
positive  as  that  of  either  parent ;  but,  for  all  that,  its  future 
course  is  marked  out  for  it,  all  arranged  and  predetermined. 

John  has  a  perfect  mania  for  literary  distinction.  His 
own  education  was  somewhat  imperfect,  but  he  is  deter 
mined  his  children  shall  be  prodigies.  His  first-born  turns 
out  a  girl,  who  is  to  write  like  Madame  de  Stael,  —  to  be  an 


INTOLERANCE  415 

able,  accomplished  woman.  He  bores  her  with  literature 
from  her  earliest  years,  reads  extracts  from  Milton  to  her 
when  she  is  only  eight  years  old,  and  is  secretly  longing  to 
be  playing  with  her  doll's  wardrobe.  He  multiplies  gover 
nesses,  spares  no  expense,  and  when,  after  all,  his  daughter 
turns  out  to  be  only  a  very  pretty,  sensible,  domestic  girl, 
fond  of  cross-stitching  embroidery,  and  with  a  more  decided 
vocation  for  sponge-cake  and  pickles  than  for  poetry  and 
composition,  he  is  disappointed  and  treats  her  coldly ;  and 
she  is  unhappy  and  feels  that  she  has  vexed  her  parents, 
because  she  cannot  be  what  nature  never  meant  her  to  be. 
If  John  had  taken  meekly  the  present  that  Mother  Nature 
gave  him,  and  humbly  set  himself  to  inquire  what  it  was 
and  what  it  was  good  for,  he  might  have  had  years  of 
happiness  with  a  modest,  amiable,  and  domestic  daughter, 
to  whom  had  been  given  the  instinct  to  study  household 
good. 

But  again,  a  bustling,  pickling,  preserving,  stocking-knit 
ting,  universal-housekeeping  woman  has  a  daughter  who 
dreams  over  her  knitting-work  and  hides  a  book  under  her 
sampler,  —  whose  thoughts  are  straying  in  Greece,  Rome, 
Germany,  —  who  is  reading,  studying,  thinking,  writing, 
without  knowing  why ;  and  the  mother  sets  herself  to  fight 
this  nature,  and  to  make  the  dreamy  scholar  into  a  driving, 
thoroughgoing,  exact  woman-of-business.  How  many  tears 
are  shed,  how  much  temper  wasted,  how  much  time  lost,  in 
such  encounters  ! 

Each  of  these  natures,  under  judicious  training,  might 
be  made  to  complete  itself  by  cultivation  of  that  which  it 
lacked.  The  born  housekeeper  can  never  be  made  a  genius, 
but  she  may  add  to  her  household  virtues  some  reasonable 
share  of  literary  culture  and  appreciation,  —  and  the  born 
scholar  may  learn  to  come  down  out  of  her  clouds,  and  see 
enough  of  this  earth  to  walk  its  practical  ways  without 
stumbling ;  but  this  must  be  done  by  tolerance  of  their 


416  LITTLE   FOXES 

nature,  —  by  giving  it  play  and  room,  —  first  recognizing 
its  existence  and  its  rights,  and  then  seeking  to  add  to  it  the 
properties  it  wants. 

A  clever  Yankee  housekeeper,  fruitful  of  resources,  can 
work  with  any  tools  or  with  no  tools  at  all.  If  she  abso 
lutely  cannot  get  a  tack-hammer  with  a  claw  on  one  end,  she 
can  take  up  carpet-nails  with  an  iron  spoon,  and  drive  them 
down  with  a  flatiron  ;  and  she  has  sense  enough  not  to 
scold,  though  she  does  her  work  with  them  at  considerable 
disadvantage.  She  knows  that  she  is  working  with  tools 
made  for  another  purpose,  and  never  thinks  of  being  angry 
at  their  unhandiness.  She  might  have  equal  patience  with 
a  daughter  unhandy  in  physical  things,  but  acute  and  skill 
ful  in  mental  ones,  if  she  once  had  the  idea  suggested  to 
her. 

An  ambitious  man  has  a  son  whom  he  destines  to  a  learned 
profession.  He  is  to  be  the  Daniel  Webster  of  the  family. 
The  boy  has  a  robust,  muscular  frame,  great  physical  vigor 
and  enterprise,  a  brain  bright  and  active  in  all  that  may  be 
acquired  through  the  bodily  senses,  but  which  is  dull  and 
confused  and  wandering  when  put  to  abstract  book-know 
ledge.  He  knows  every  ship  at  the  wharf,  her  build,  ton 
nage,  and  sailing  qualities  ;  he  knows  every  railroad  engine, 
its  power,  speed,  and  hours  of  coming  and  going ;  he  is  al 
ways  busy,  sawing,  hammering,  planing,  digging,  driving, 
making  bargains,  with  his  head  full  of  plans,  all  relating  to 
something  outward  and  physical.  In  all  these  matters  his 
mind  works  strongly,  his  ideas  are  clear,  his  observation 
acute,  his  conversation  sensible  and  worth  listening  to. 
But  as  to  the  distinction  between  common  nouns  and  proper 
nouns,  between  the  subject  and  the  predicate  of  a  sentence, 
between  the  relative  pronoun  and  the  demonstrative  adjec 
tive  pronoun,  between  the  perfect  and  the  preter-perfect 
tense,  he  is  extremely  dull  and  hazy.  The  region  of  ab 
stract  ideas  is  to  him  a  region  of  ghosts  and  shadows.  Yet 


INTOLERANCE  417 

his  youth  is  mainly  a  dreary  wilderness  of  uncomprehended, 
incomprehensible  studies,  of  privations,  tasks,  punishments, 
with  a  sense  of  continual  failure,  disappointment,  and  dis 
grace,  because  his  father  is  trying  to  make  a  scholar  and  a 
literary  man  out  of  a  boy  whom  nature  made  to  till  the 
soil  or  manage  the  material  forces  of  the  world.  He  might 
be  a  farmer,  an  engineer,  a  pioneer  of  a  new  settlement,  a 
sailor,  a  soldier,  a  thriving  man  of  business ;  but  he  grows 
up  feeling  that  his  nature  is  a  crime,  and  that  he  is  good 
for  nothing,  because  he  is  not  good  for  what  he  had  been 
blindly  predestined  to  before  he  was  born. 

Another  boy  is  a  born  mechanic  :  he  understands  machin 
ery  at  a  glance  ;  he  is  all  the  while  pondering  and  studying 
and  experimenting.  But  his  wheels  and  his  axles  and  his 
pulleys  are  all  swept  away,  as  so  much  irrelevant  lumber  ; 
he  is  doomed  to  go  into  the  Latin  School,  and  spend  three  or 
four  years  in  trying  to  learn  what  he  never  can  learn  well, 
—  disheartened  by  always  being  at  the  tail  of  his  class,  and 
seeing  many  a  boy  inferior  to  himself  in  general  culture 
who  is  rising  to  brilliant  distinction  simply  because  he  can 
remember  those  hopeless,  bewildering  Greek  quantities  and 
accents  which  he  is  constantly  forgetting,  —  as,  for  example, 
how  properispomena  become  paroxytones  when  the  ultimate 
becomes  long,  and  proparoxytones  become  paroxytones  when 
the  ultimate  becomes  long,  while  paroxytones  with  a  short 
penult  remain  paroxytones.  Each  of  this  class  of  rules, 
however,  having  about  sixteen  exceptions,  which  hold  good 
except  in  three  or  four  other  exceptional  cases  under  them, 
the  labyrinth  becomes  delightfully  wilder  and  wilder  ;  and 
the  crowning  beauty  of  the  whole  is,  that,  when  the  bewil 
dered  boy  has  swallowed  the  whole,  —  tail,  scales,  fins,  and 
bones,  —  he  then  is  allowed  to  read  the  classics  in  peace, 
without  the  slightest  occasion  to  refer  to  them  again  during 
his  college  course. 

The  great  trouble  with  the  so-called  classical  course   of 


418  LITTLE   FOXES 

education  is,  that  it  is  made  strictly  for  but  one  class  of  minds, 
which  it  drills  in  respects  for  which  they  have  by  nature 
an  aptitude,  and  to  which  it  presents  scarcely  enough  of 
difficulty  to  make  it  a  mental  discipline,  while  to  another 
and  equally  valuable  class  of  minds  it  presents  difficulties 
so  great  as  actually  to  crush  and  discourage.  There  are,  we 
will  venture  to  say,  in  every  ten  boys  in  Boston,  four,  and 
those  not  the  dullest  or  poorest  in  quality,  who  could  never 
go  through  the  discipline  of  the  Boston  Latin  School  without 
such  a  strain  on  the  brain  and  nervous  system  as  would  leave 
them  no  power  for  anything  else. 

A  bright  intelligent  boy,  whose  talents  lay  in  the  line  of 
natural  philosophy  and  mechanics,  passed  with  brilliant  suc 
cess  through  the  Boston  English  High  School.  He  won 
the  first  medals,  and  felt  all  that  pride  and  enthusiasm  which 
belong  to  a  successful  student.  He  entered  the  Latin  Clas 
sical  School  as  the  next  step  on  his  way  to  a  collegiate  educa 
tion.  With  a  large  philosophic  and  reasoning  brain,  he  had 
a  very  poor  verbal  and  textual  memory  ;  and  here  he  began 
to  see  himself  distanced  by  boys  who  had  hitherto  looked  up 
to  him.  They  could  rattle  off  catalogues  of  names ;  they 
could  do  so  all  the  better  from  the  habit  of  not  thinking  of 
what  they  studied.  They  could  commit  the  Latin  Gram 
mar,  coarse  print  and  fine,  and  run  through  the  interminable 
mazes  of  Greek  accents  and  Greek  inflections.  This  boy  of 
large  mind  and  brain  found  himself  always  behindhand,  and 
became,  in  time,  utterly  discouraged ;  no  .  amount  of  study 
could  place  him  on  an  equality  with  his  former  inferiors. 
His  health  failed,  and  he  dropped  from  school.  Many  a 
fine  fellow  has  been  lost  to  himself,  and  lost  to  an  educated 
life,  by  just  such  a  failure.  The  collegiate  system  is  like  a 
great  coal-screen  :  every  piece  not  of  a  certain  size  must  fall 
through.  This  may  do  well  enough  for  screening  coal ;  but 
what  if  it  were  used  indiscriminately  for  a  mixture  of  coal 
and  diamonds  ? 


INTOLERANCE  419 

"  Poor  boy  !  "  said  Ole  Bull,  compassionately,  when  one 
sought  to  push  a  schoolboy  from  the  steps  of  an  omnibus, 
where  he  was  getting  a  surreptitious  ride.  "  Poor  boy  !  let 
him  stay.  Who  knows  his  trials  ?  Perhaps  he  studies 
Latin." 

The  witty  Heinrich  Heine  says,  in  bitter  remembrance 
of  his  early  sufferings,  —  "  The  Romans  would  never  have 
conquered  the  world,  if  they  had  had  to  learn  their  own 
language.  They  had  leisure,  because  they  were  born  with 
the  knowledge  of  what  nouns  form  their  accusatives  in 
im» 

Now  we  are  not  among  those  who  decry  the  Greek  and 
Latin  classics.  We  think  it  a  glorious  privilege  to  read 
both  those  grand  old  tongues,  and  that  an  intelligent,  culti 
vated  man  who  is  shut  out  from  the  converse  of  the  splendid 
minds  of  those  olden  times  loses  a  part  of  his  birthright ; 
and  therefore  it  is  that  we  mourn  that  but  one  dry,  hard, 
technical  path,  one  sharp,  straight,  narrow  way,  is  allowed 
into  so  goodly  a  land  of  knowledge.  We  think  there  is  no 
need  that  the  study  of  Greek  and  Latin  should  be  made 
such  a  horror.  There  is  many  a  man  without  a  verbal 
memory,  who  could  neither  recite  in  order  the  paradigms  of 
the  Greek  verbs,  nor  repeat  the  lists  of  nouns  that  form  their 
accusative  in  one  termination  or  another,  who,  nevertheless, 
by  the  exercise  of  his  faculties  of  comparison  and  reasoning, 
could  learn  to  read  the  Greek  and  Latin  classics  so  as  to  take 
their  sense  and  enjoy  their  spirit ;  and  that  is  all  that  is 
worth  caring  for.  We  have  known  one  young  scholar,  who 
could  not  by  any  possibility  repeat  the  lists  of  exceptions 
to  the  rules  in  the  Latin  Grammar,  who  yet  delightedly  filled 
his  private  notebook  with  quotations  from  the  ".^Eneid," 
and  was  making  extracts  of  literary  gems  from  his  Greek 
Reader,  at  the  same  time  that  he  was  every  day  "screwed  " 
by  his  tutor  upon  some  technical  point  of  the  language. 

Is  there  not  many  a  master  of  English,  many  a  writer 


420  LITTLE   FOXES 

and  orator,  who  could  not  repeat  from  memory  the  list  of 
nouns  ending  in  y  that  form  their  plural  in  ies,  with  the 
exceptions  under  it  ?  How  many  of  us  could  do  this  ? 
Would  it  help  a  good  writer  and  fluent  speaker  to  know  the 
whole  of  Murray's  Grammar  by  heart,  or  does  real  know 
ledge  of  a  language  ever  come  in  this  way  ? 

At  present  the  rich  stores  of  ancient  literature  are  kept 
like  the  savory  stew  which  poor  Dominie  Sampson  heard 
simmering  in  the  witch's  kettle.  One  may  have  much  ap 
petite,  but  there  is  but  one" way  of  getting  it.  The  Meg 
Merrilies  of  our  educational  system,  with  her  harsh  voice, 
and  her  "  Gape,  sinner,  and  swallow,"  is  the  only  introduc 
tion,  —  and  so,  many  a  one  turns  and  runs  frightened  from 
the  feast. 

This  intolerant  mode  of  teaching  the  classical  languages 
is  peculiar  to  them  alone.  Multitudes  of  girls  and  boys  are 
learning  to  read  and  to  speak  German,  French,  and  Italian, 
and  to  feel  all  the  delights  of  expatiating  in  the  literature 
of  a  new  language,  purely  because  of  a  simpler,  more  nat 
ural,  less  pedantic  mode  of  teaching  these  languages. 

Intolerance  in  the  established  system  of  education  works 
misery  in  families,  because  family  pride  decrees  that  every 
boy  of  good  status  in  society,  will  he,  nill  he,  shall  go 
through  college,  or  he  almost  forfeits  his  position  as  a  gen 
tleman. 

"  Not  go  to  Cambridge ! "  says  Scholasticus  to  his  first 
born.  "  Why,  I  went  there,  —  and  my  father,  and  his  fa 
ther,  and  his  father  before  him.  Look  at  the  Cambridge 
Catalogue  and  you  will  see  the  names  of  our  family  ever 
since  the  College  was  founded  !  " 

"  But  I  can't  learn  Latin  and  Greek,"  says  young  Scho 
lasticus.  "  I  can't  remember  all  those  rules  and  exceptions. 
I  've  tried,  and  I  can't.  If  you  could  only  know  how  my 
head  feels  when  I  try  !  And  I  won't  be  at  the  foot  of  the 
class  all  the  time,  if  I  have  to  get  my  living  by  digging." 


INTOLERANCE  421 

Suppose,  now,  the  boy  is  pushed  on  at  the  point  of  the 
bayonet  to  a  kind  of  knowledge  in  which  he  has  no  interest, 
communicated  in  a  way  that  requires  faculties  which  nature 
has  not  given  him,  —  what  occurs  ? 

He  goes  through  his  course,  either  shamming,  shirking, 
ponying,  all  the  while  consciously  discredited  and  dishon 
ored,  —  or  else,  putting  forth  an  effort  that  is  a  draft  on  all 
his  nervous  energy,  he  makes  merely  a  decent  scholar,  and 
loses  his  health  for  life. 

Now,  if  the  principle  of  toleration  were  once  admitted 
into  classical  education ;  if  it  were  admitted  that  the  great 
object  is  to  read  and  enjoy  a  language,  and  the  stress  of  the 
teaching  were  placed  on  the  few  things  absolutely  essential 
to  this  result ;  if  the  tortoise  were  allowed  time  to  creep, 
and  the  bird  permitted  to  fly,  and  the  fish  to  swim,  towards 
the  enchanted  and  divine  sources  of  Helicon,  —  all  might 
in  their  own  way  arrive  there,  and  rejoice  in  its  flowers,  its 
beauty,  and  its  coolness. 

" But,"  say  the  advocates  of  the  present  system,  "it  is 
good  mental  discipline." 

I  doubt  it.     It  is  mere  waste  of  time. 

When  a  boy  has  learned  that  in  the  genitive  plural  of 
the  first  declension  of  Greek  nouns  the  final  syllable  is  cir- 
cumflexed,  but  to  this  there  are  the  following  exceptions  : 
1.  That  feminine  adjectives  and  participles  in  -os,  -17,  -ov  are 
accented  like  the  genitive  masculine,  but  other  feminine 
adjectives  and  participles  are  perispomena  in  the  genitive 
plural ;  2.  That  the  substantives  chrestes,  aphue,  etesiai, 
and  chlounes  in  the  genitive  plural  remain  paroxytones 
(Kiihner's  Elementary  Greek  Grammar,  page  22,)  —  I  say, 
when  a  boy  has  learned  this  and  twenty  other  things  just 
like  it,  his  mind  has  not  been  one  whit  more  disciplined 
than  if  he  had  learned  the  list  of  the  old  thirteen  States, 
the  number  and  names  of  the  newly  adopted  ones,  the  times 
of  their  adoption,  and  the  population,  commerce,  mineral 


422  LITTLE   FOXES 

and  agricultural  wealth  of  each.  These,  too,  are  merely  ex 
ercises  of  memory,  but  they  are  exercises  in  what  is  of  some 
interest  and  some  use. 

The  particulars  above  cited  are  of  so  little  use  in  under 
standing  the  Greek  classics  that  I  will  venture  to  say  that 
there  are  intelligent  English  scholars,  who  have  never  read 
anything  but  Bonn's  translations,  who  have  more  genuine 
knowledge  of  the  spirit  of  the  Greek  mind,  and  the  peculiar 
idioms  of  the  language,  and  more  enthusiasm  for  it,  than 
many  a  poor  fellow  who  has  stumbled  blindly  through  the 
originals  with  the  bayonet  of  the  tutor  at  his  heels,  and  his 
eyes  and  ears  full  of  the  Scotch  snuff  of  the  Greek  Grammar. 

What  then  ?  Shall  we  not  learn  these  ancient  tongues  ? 
By  all  means.  "  So  many  times  as  I  learn  a  language,  so 
many  times  I  become  a  man,"  said  Charles  V. ;  and  he  said 
rightly.  Latin  and  Greek  are  foully  belied  by  the  preju 
dices  created  by  this  technical,  pedantic  mode  of  teaching 
them,  which  makes  one  ragged,  prickly  bundle  of  all  the 
dry  facts  of  the  language,  and  insists  upon  it  that  the  boy 
shall  not  see  one  glimpse  of  its  beauty,  glory,  or  interest 
till  he  has  swallowed  and  digested  the  whole  mass.  Many 
die  in  this  wilderness  with  their  shoes  worn  out  before 
reaching  the  Promised  Land  of  Plato  and  the  Tragedians. 

"  But,"  say  our  college  authorities,  "  look  at  England. 
An  English  schoolboy  learns  three  times  the  Latin  and 
Greek  that  our  boys  learn,  and  has  them  well  drubbed 
in." 

And  English  boys  have  three  times  more  beef  and  pud 
ding  in  their  constitution  than  American  boys  have,  and 
three  times  less  of  nerves.  The  difference  of  nature  must 
be  considered  here ;  and  the  constant  influence  flowing 
from  English  schools  and  universities  must  be  tempered  by 
considering  who  we  are,  what  sort  of  boys  we  have  to  deal 
with,  what  treatment  they  can  bear,  and  what  are  the  needs 
of  our  growing  American  society. 


INTOLERANCE  423 

The  demands  of  actual  life,  the  living,  visible  facts  of 
practical  science,  in  so  large  and  new  a  country  as  ours,  re 
quire  that  the  ideas  of  the  ancients  should  be  given  us  in 
the  shortest  and  most  economical  way  possible,  and  that 
scholastic  technicalities  should  be  reserved  to  those  whom 
Nature  made  with  especial  reference  to  their  preservation. 

On  no  subject  is  there  more  intolerant  judgment,  and 
more  suffering  from  such  intolerance,  than  on  the  much 
mooted  one  of  the  education  of  children.  Treatises  on  edu 
cation  require  altogether  too  much  of  parents,  and  impose 
burdens  of  responsibility  on  tender  spirits  which  crush  the 
life  and  strength  out  of  them.  Parents  have  been  talked 
to  as  if  each  child  came  to  them  a  soft,  pulpy  mass,  which 
they  were  to  pinch  and  pull  and  pat  and  stroke  into  shape 
quite  at  their  leisure,  —  and  a  good  pattern  being  placed 
before  them,  they  were  to  proceed  immediately  to  set  up 
and  construct  a  good  human  being  in  conformity  therewith. 

It  is  strange  that  believers  in  the  divine  inspiration  of 
the  Bible  should  have  entertained  this  idea,  overlooking 
the  constant  and  affecting  declaration  of  the  great  Heavenly 
Father  that  He  has  nourished  and  brought  up  children  and 
they  have  rebelled  against  Him,  together  with  His  constant 
appeals,  —  "  What  could  have  been  done  more  to  my  vine 
yard  that  I  have  not  done  in  it  ?  Wherefore,  when  I 
looked  that  it  should  bring  forth  grapes,  brought  it  forth 
wild  grapes  ?  "  If  even  God,  wiser,  better,  purer,  more 
loving,  admits  himself  baffled  in  this  great  work,  is  it  ex 
pedient  to  say  to  human  beings  that  the  forming  power,  the 
deciding  force,  of  a  child's  character  is  in  their  hands  ? 

Many  a  poor,  feeble  woman's  health  has  been  strained 
to  breaking,  and  her  life  darkened,  by  the  laying  on  her 
shoulders  of  a  burden  of  responsibility  that  never  ought  to 
have  been  placed  there ;  and  many  a  mother  has  been  hin 
dered  from  using  such  powers  as  God  has  given  her,  be 
cause  some  preconceived  mode  of  operation  has  been  set  up 


424  LITTLE   FOXES 

before  her  which  she  could  no  more  make  effectual  than 
David  could  wear  the  armor  of  Saul. 

A. gentle,  loving,  fragile  creature  marries  a  strong-willed, 
energetic  man,  and  by  the  laws  of  natural  descent  has  a 
boy  given  to  her  of  twice  her  amount  of  will  and  energy. 
She  is  just  as  helpless,  in  the  mere  struggle  of  will  and 
authority  with  such  a  child,  as  she  would  be  in  a  physical 
wrestle  with  a  six-foot  man. 

What  then  ?  Has  nature  left  her  helpless  for  her  du 
ties  ?  Not  if  she  understands  her  nature,  and  acts  in  the  line 
of  it.  She  has  no  power  of  command,  but  she  has  power 
of  persuasion.  She  can  neither  bend  nor  break  the  boy's 
iron  will,  but  she  can  melt  it.  She  has  tact  to  avoid  the 
conflict  in  which  she  would  be  worsted.  She  can  charm, 
amuse,  please,  and  make  willing  ;  and  her  fine  and  subtle 
influences,  weaving  themselves  about  him  day  after  day, 
become  more  and  more  powerful.  Let  her  alone,  and  she 
will  have  her  boy  yet. 

But  now  some  bustling  mother-in-law,  or  other  privileged 
expounder,  says  to  her,  — 

"My  dear,  it's  your  solemn  duty  to  break  that  boy's 
will.  I  broke  my  boy's  will  short  off.  Keep  your  whip 
in  sight,  meet  him  at  every  turn,  fight  him  whenever  he 
crosses  you,  never  let  him  get  one  victory,  and  finally  his 
will  will  be  wholly  subdued." 

Such  advice  is  mischievous,  because  what  it  proposes  is 
as  utter  an  impossibility  to  the  woman's  nature  as  for  a 
cow  to  scratch  up  worms  for  her  calf,  or  a  hen  to  suckle 
her  chickens. 

There  are  men  and  women  of  strong,  resolute  will  who 
are  gifted  with  the  power  of  governing  the  wills  of  others. 
Such  persons  can  govern  in  this  way,  —  and  their  govern 
ment,  being  in  the  line  of  their  nature,  acting  strongly,  con 
sistently,  naturally,  makes  everything  move  harmoniously. 
Let  them  be  content  with  their  own  success,  but  let  them 


INTOLERANCE  425 

not  set  up  as  general  education-doctors,  or  apply  their  ex 
perience  to  all  possible  cases. 

Again,  there  are  others,  and  among  them  some  of  the 
loveliest  and  purest  natures,  who  have  no  power  of  com 
mand.  They  have  sufficient  tenacity  of  will  as  respects 
their  own  course,  but  have  no  compulsory  power  over  the 
wills  of  others.  Many  such  women  have  been  most  suc 
cessful  mothers,  when  they  followed  the  line  of  their  own 
natures,  and  did  not  undertake  what  they  never  could  do. 

Influence  is  a  slower  acting  force  than  authority.  It 
seems  weaker,  but  in  the  long  run  it  often  effects  more. 
It  always  does  better  than  mere  force  and  authority  with 
out  its  gentle  modifying  power. 

She  who  obtains  an  absolute  and  perfect  government  over 
a  child,  so  that  he  obeys,  certainly  and  almost  mechanically 
produces  effects  which  are  more  appreciable  in  their  im 
mediate  action  on  family  life  ;  her  family  will  be  more 
orderly,  her  children  in  their  childhood  will  do  her  more 
credit. 

But  she  who  has  consciously  no  power  of  this  kind, 
whose  children  are  often  turbulent  and  unmanageable,  need 
not  despair  if  she  feel  that  through  affection,  reason,  and 
conscience,  she  still  retains  a  strong  influence  over  them. 
If  she  cannot  govern  her  boy,  she  can  do  even  a  better 
thing  if  she  can  inspire  him  with  a  purpose  to  govern 
himself  ;  for  a  boy  taught  to  govern  himself  is  a  better 
achievement  than  a  boy  merely  governed. 

If  a  mother,  therefore,  is  high-principled,  religious,  affec 
tionate,  if  she  never  uses  craft  or  deception,  if  she  gov 
erns  her  temper  and  sets  a  good  example,  let  her  hold  on 
in  good  hope,  though  she  cannot  produce  the  discipline  of 
a  man-of-war  in  her  noisy  little  flock,  or  make  all  move  as 
smoothly  as  some  other  women  to  whom  God  has  given 
another  and  different  talent ;  and  let  her  not  be  discour 
aged,  if  she  seem  often  to  accomplish  but  little  in  that 


426  LITTLE   FOXES 

arduous  work  of  forming  human  character  wherein  the 
great  Creator  of  the  world  has  declared  himself  at  times 
baffled. 

Family  tolerance  must  take  great  account  of  the  stages 
and  periods  of  development  and  growth  in  children. 

The  passage  of  a  human  being  from  one  stage  of  develop 
ment  to  another,  like  the  sun's  passage  across  the  equator, 
frequently  has  its  storms  and  tempests.  The  change  to 
manhood  and  womanhood  often  involves  brain,  nerves5 
body,  and  soul  in  confusion  ;  the  child  sometimes  seems 
lost  to  himself  and  his  parents,  —  his  very  nature  changing. 
In  this  sensitive  state  come  restless  desires,  unreasonable 
longings,  unsettled  purposes  ;  and  the  fatal  habit  of  indul 
gence  in  deadly  stimulants,  ruining  all  the  life,  often  springs 
from  the  cravings  of  this  transition  period. 

Here  must  come  in  the  patience  of  the  saints.  The 
restlessness  must  be  soothed,  the  family  hearth  must  be 
tolerant  enough  to  keep  there  the  boy,  whom  Satan  will  re 
ceive  and  cherish,  if  his  mother  does  not.  The  male  ele 
ment  sometimes  pours  into  a  boy  like  the  tides  in  the  Bay 
of  Fundy,  with  tumult  and  tossing.  He  is  noisy,  vocifer 
ous,  uproarious,  and  seems  bent  only  on  disturbance  ;  he 
despises  conventionalities,  he  hates  parlors,  he  longs  for 
the  woods,  the  sea,  the  converse  of  rough  men,  and  kicks 
at  constraint  of  all  kinds.  Have  patience  now,  let  love 
have  its  perfect  work,  and  in  a  year  or  two,  if  no  deadly 
physical  habits  set  in,  a  quiet,  well-mannered  gentleman 
will  be  evolved.  Meanwhile,  if  he  does  not  wipe  his 
shoes,  and  if  he  will  fling  his  hat  upon  the  floor,  and  tear 
his  clothes,  and  bang  and  hammer  and  shout,  and  cause 
general  confusion  in  his  belongings,  do  not  despair  ;  for  if 
you  only  get  your  son,  the  hat  and  clothes  and  shoes  and 
noise  and  confusion  do  not  matter.  Any  amount  of  tolera 
tion  that  keeps  a  boy  contented  at  home  is  treasure  well 
expended  at  this  time  of  life. 


INTOLERANCE  427 

One  thing  not  enough  reflected  on  is,  that  in  this  transi 
tion  period  between  childhood  and  maturity  the  heaviest 
draft  and  strain  of  school  education  occurs.  The  boy  is  fit 
ting  for  the  university,  the  girl  going  through  the  studies 
of  the  college  senior  year,  and  the  brain-power,  which  is 
working  almost  to  the  breaking-point  to  perfect  the  physical 
change,  has  the  additional  labor  of  all  the  drill  and  dis 
cipline  of  school. 

The  girl  is  growing  into  a  tall  and  shapely  woman,  and 
the  poor  brain  is  put  to  it  to  find  enough  phosphate  of  lime, 
carbon,  and  other  what-not,  to  build  her  fair  edifice.  The 
bills  flow  in  upon  her  thick  and  fast ;  she  pays  out  hand 
over  hand :  if  she  had  only  her  woman  to  build,  she  might 
get  along,  but  now  come  in  demands  for  algebra,  geometry, 
music,  language,  and  the  poor  brain-bank  stops  payment ; 
some  part  of  the  work  is  shabbily  done,  and  a  crooked  spine 
or  weakened  lungs  are  the  result. 

Boarding-schools,  both  for  boys  and  girls,  are  for  the 
most  part  composed  of  young  people  in  this  most  delicate, 
critical  portion  of  their  physical,  mental,  and  moral  devel 
opment,  whose  teachers  are  expected  to  put  them  through 
one  straight,  severe  course  of  drill,  without  the  slightest  al 
lowance  for  the  great  physical  facts  of  their  being.  No  won 
der  they  are  difficult  to  manage,  and  that  so  many  of  them 
drop,  physically,  mentally,  and  morally  halt  and  maimed. 
It  is  not  the  teacher's  fault ;  he  but  fulfills  the  parent's  requi 
sition,  which  dooms  his  child  without  appeal  to  a  certain 
course,  simply  because  others  have  gone  through  it. 

Finally,  as  my  sermon  is  too  long  already,  let  me  end 
with  a  single  reflection.  Every  human  being  has  some 
handle  by  which  he  may  be  lifted,  some  groove  in  which 
he  was  meant  to  run  ;  and  the  great  work  of  life,  as  far  as 
our  relations  with  each  other  are  concerned,  is  to  lift  each 
one  by  his  own  proper  handle,  and  run  each  one  in  his  own 
proper  groove. 


VI 

DISCOURTESY 

"FOR  my  part/'  said  my  wife,  "I  think  one  of  the 
greatest  destroyers  of  domestic  peace  is  Discourtesy.  Peo 
ple  neglect,  with  their  nearest  friends,  those  refinements 
and  civilities  which  they  practice  with  strangers." 

"  My  dear  madam,  I  am  of  another  opinion,"  said  Bob 
Stephens.  "  The  restraints  of  etiquette,  the  formalities  of 
ceremony,  are  tedious  enough  in  outdoor  life ;  but  when 
a  man  comes  home,  he  wants  leave  to  take  off  his  tight 
boots  and  gloves,  wear  the  gown  and  slippers,  and  speak 
his  mind  freely  without  troubling  his  head  where  it  hits. 
Home  life  should  be  the  communion  of  people  who  have 
learned  to  understand  each  other,  who  allow  each  other  a 
generous  latitude  and  freedom.  One  wants  one  place  where 
he  may  feel  at  liberty  to  be  tired  or  dull  or  disagreeable 
without  ruining  his  character.  Home  is  the  place  where 
we  should  expect  to  live  somewhat  on  the  credit  which  a 
full  knowledge  of  each  other's  goodness  and  worth  inspires ; 
and  it  is  not  necessary  for  intimate  friends  to  go  through 
every  day  those  civilities  and  attentions  which  they  practice 
with  strangers  any  more  than  it  is  necessary  among  literary 
people  to  repeat  the  alphabet  over  every  day  before  one 
begins  to  read." 

"  Yes,"  said  Jenny,  "  when  a  young  gentleman  is  paying 
his  addresses,  he  helps  a  young  lady  out  of  a  carriage  so 
tenderly,  and  holds  back  her  dress  so  adroitly,  that  not  a 
particle  of  mud  gets  on  it  from  the  wheels ;  but  when  the 
mutual  understanding  is  complete,  and  the  affection  perfect, 


DISCOURTESY  429 

and  she  is  his  wife,  he  sits  still  and  holds  the  horse  and 
lets  her  climb  out  alone.  To  be  sure,  when  pretty  Miss 
Titmouse  is  visiting  them,  he  still  shows  himself  gallant, 
flies  from  the  carriage,  and  holds  back  her  dress  :  that  's 
because  he  does  n't  love  her,  nor  she  him,  and  they  are  not 
on  the  ground  of  mutual  affection.  When  a  gentleman  is 
only  engaged,  or  a  friend,  if  you  hem  him  a  cravat  or  mend 
his  gloves,  he  thanks  you  in  the  blandest  manner ;  but 
when  you  are  once  sure  of  his  affection,  he  only  says, '  Very 
well ;  now  I  wish  you  would  look  over  my  shirts,  and 
mend  that  rip  in  my  coat,  —  and  be  sure  don't  forget  it, 
as  you  did  yesterday.'  For  all  which  reasons,"  said  Miss 
Jenny,  with  a  toss  of  her  pretty  head,  "  I  mean  to  put  off 
marrying  as  long  as  possible,  because  I  think  it  far  more 
agreeable  to  have  gentlemen  friends  with  whom  I  stand  on 
the  ground  of  ceremony  and  politeness  than  to  be  restricted 
to  one  who  is  living  on  the  credit  of  his  affection.  I  don't 
want  a  man  who  gapes  in  my  face,  reads  a  newspaper  all 
breakfast-time  while  I  want  somebody  to  talk  to,  smokes 
cigars  all  the  evening,  or  reads  to  himself  when  I  would 
like  him  to  be  entertaining,  and  considers  his  affection  for  me 
as  his  right  and  title  to  make  himself  generally  disagreeable. 
If  he  has  a  bright  face,  and  pleasant,  entertaining,  gallant 
ways,  I  like  to  be  among  the  ladies  who  may  have  the  ben 
efit  of  them,  and  should  take  care  how  I  lost  my  title  to  it  by 
coming  with  him  on  to  the  ground  of  domestic  affection." 

"  Well,  Miss  Jenny,"  said  Bob,  "  it  is  n't  merely  our  sex 
who  are  guilty  of  making  themselves  less  agreeable  after 
marriage.  Your  dapper  little  fairy  creatures,  who  dazzle  us 
so  with  wondrous  and  fresh  toilettes,  who  are  so  trim  and 
neat  and  sprightly  and  enchanting,  what  becomes  of  them 
after  marriage  ?  If  he  reads  the  newspaper  at  the  breakfast- 
table,  perhaps  it 's  because  there  is  a  sleepy,  dowdy  woman 
opposite,  in  a  faded  gingham  wrapper,  put  on  in  the  sacred- 
ness  of  domestic  privacy,  and  perhaps  she  has  laid  aside 


430  LITTLE   FOXES 

those  crisp,  sparkling,  bright  little  sayings  and  doings  that 
used  to  make  it  impossible  to  look  at  or  listen  to  any 
body  else  when  she  was  about.  Such  things  are,  sometimes, 
among  the  goddesses,  I  believe.  Of  course,  Marianne  and  I 
know  nothing  of  these  troubles ;  we,  being  a  model  pair,  sit 
among  the  clouds  and  speculate  on  all  these  matters  as  spec 
tators  merely." 

"Well,  you  see  what  your  principle  leads  to,  carried 
out,"  said  Jenny.  "If  home  is  merely  the  place  where  one 
may  feel  at  liberty  to  be  tired  or  dull  or  disagreeable,  with 
out  losing  one's  character,  I  think  the  women  have  far  more 
right  to  avail  themselves  of  the  liberty  than  the  men ;  for 
all  the  lonesome,  dull,  disagreeable  part  of  home  life  comes 
into  their  department.  It  is  they  who  must  keep  awake 
with  the  baby,  if  it  frets  ;  and  if  they  do  not  feel  spirits  to 
make  an  attractive  toilette  in  the  morning,  or  have  not  the 
airy,  graceful  fancies  that  they  had  when  they  were  girls, 
it  is  not  so  very  much  against  them.  A  housekeeper  and 
nursery-maid  cannot  be  expected  to  be  quite  as  elegant  in 
her  toilette  and  as  entertaining  in  her  ways  as  a  girl  without 
a  care  in  her  father's  house ;  but  I  think  that  this  is  no  ex 
cuse  for  husbands  neglecting  the  little  civilities  and  atten 
tions  which  they  used  to  show  before  marriage.  They  are 
strong  and  well  and  hearty  ;  go  out  into  the  world  and  hear 
and  see  a  great  deal  that  keeps  their  minds  moving  and 
awake ;  and  they  ought  to  entertain  their  wives  after  mar 
riage  just  as  their  wives  entertained  them  before.  That 's 
the  way  my  husband  must  do,  or  I  will  never  have  one,  — 
and  it  will  be  small  loss  if  I  don't,"  said  Miss  Jenny. 

"Well,"  said  Bob,  "I  must  endeavor  to  initiate  Charley 
Sedley  in  time." 

"  Charley  Sedley,  Bob  !  "  said  Jenny,  with  crimson  in 
dignation.  "  I  wonder  you  will  always  bring  up  that  old 
story,  when  I  ?ve  told  you  a  hundred  times  how  disagreeable 
it  is  !  Charley  and  I  are  good  friends,  but "  — 


DISCOURTESY  431 

"  There,  there,"  said  Bob,  "  that  will  do  ;  you  don't  need 
to  proceed  further.'7 

"  You  only  said-  that  because  you  could  n't  answer  my 
argument,"  said  Jenny. 

"  Well,  my  dear,"  said  Bob,  "  you  know  everything  has 
two  sides  to  it,  and  I  '11  admit  that  you  have  brought  up 
the  opposite  side  to  mine  quite  handsomely  ;  but,  for  all 
that,  I  am  convinced  that,  if  what  I  said  was  not  really 
the  truth,  yet  the  truth  lies  somewhere  in  the  vicinity  of  it. 
As  I  said  before,  so  I  say  again,  true  love  ought  to  beget  a 
freedom  which  shall  do  away  with  the  necessity  of  cere 
mony,  and  much  may  and  ought  to  be  tolerated  among  near 
and  dear  friends  that  would  be  discourteous  among  strangers. 
I  am  just  as  sure  of  this  as  of  anything  in  the  world." 

"  And  yet,"  said  my  wife,  "  there  is  certainly  truth  in 
the  much  quoted  lines  of  Cowper,  on  Friendship,  where  he 

says,  — 

"  As  similarity  of  mind, 
Or  something  not  to  be  defined, 

First  fixes  our  attention, 
So  manners  decent  and  polite, 
The  same  we  practiced  at  first  sight, 
Will  save  it  from  declension." 

"  Well,  now,"  said  Bob,  "  I  've  seen  enough  of  French 
politeness  between  married  people.  When  I  was  in  Paris, 
I  remember  there  was  in  our  boarding-house  a  Madame  de 
Villiers,  whose  husband  had  conferred  upon  her  his  name 
and  the  de  belonging  to  it,  in  consideration  of  a  snug  little 
income  which  she  brought  to  him  by  the  marriage.  His 
conduct  towards  her  was  a  perfect  model  of  all  the  graces 
of  civilized  life.  It  was  true  that  he  lived  on  her  income, 
and  spent  it  in  promenading  the  Boulevards,  and  visiting 
theatres  and  operas  with  divers  fair  friends  of  easy  morals ; 
still  all  this  was  so  courteously,  so  politely,  so  diplomati 
cally  arranged  with  Madame,  that  it  was  quite  worth  while 
to  be  neglected  and  cheated  for  the  sake  of  having  the 


432  LITTLE    FOXES 

thing  done  in  so  finished  and  elegant  a  manner.  According 
to  his  showing,  Monsieur  had  taken  the  neat  little  apart 
ment  for  her  in  our  pension,  because  his  circumstances  were 
embarrassed,  and  he  would  be  in  despair  to  drag  such  a 
creature  into  hardships  which  he  described  as  terrific,  and 
which  he  was  resolved  heroically  to  endure  alone.  No ; 
while  a  sous  remained  to  them,  his  adored  Julie  should 
have  her  apartment  and  the  comforts  of  life  secured  to  her, 
while  the  barest  attic  should  suffice  for  him.  Never  did  he 
visit  her  without  kissing  her  hand  with  the  homage  due  to 
a  princess,  complimenting  her  on  her  good  looks,  bringing 
bonbons,  entertaining  her  with  most  ravishing  small-talk  of 
all  the  interesting  on-dits  in  Paris  ;  and  these  visits  were 
most  particularly  frequent  as  the  time  for  receiving  her 
quarterly  installments  approached.  And  so  Madame  adored 
him  and  could  refuse  him  nothing,  believed  all  his  stories, 
and  was  well  content  to  live  on  a  fourth  of  her  own. income 
for  the  sake  of  so  engaging  a  husband." 

"  Well/'  said  Jenny,  "  I  don't  know  to  what  purpose 
your  anecdote  is  related,  but  to  me  it  means  simply  this  : 
if  a  rascal,  without  heart,  without  principle,  without  any 
good  quality,  can  win  and  keep  a  woman's  heart  merely  by 
being  invariably  polite  and  agreeable,  while  in  her  presence, 
how  much  more  might  a  man  of  sense  and  principle  and 
real  affection  do  by  the  same  means  !  I  'm  sure,  if  a  man 
who  neglects  a  woman,  and  robs  her  of  her  money,  neverthe 
less  keeps  her  affections,  merely  because  whenever  he  sees 
her  he  is  courteous  and  attentive,  it  certainly  shows  that 
courtesy  stands  for  a  great  deal  in  the  matter  of  love." 

"  With  foolish  women,"  said  Bob. 

"Yes,  and  with  sensible  ones  too,"  said  my  wife. 
"  Your  Monsieur  presents  a  specimen  of  the  French  way  of 
doing  a  bad  thing ;  but  I  know  a  poor  woman  whose  hus 
band  did  the  same  thing  in  English  fashion,  without  kisses 
or  compliments.  Instead  of  nattering,  he  swore  at  her,  and 


DISCOURTESY  433 

took  her  money  away  without  the  ceremony  of  presenting 
bonhons ;  and  I  assure  you,  if  the  thing  must  be  done  at 
all,  I  would,  for  my  part,  much  rather  have  it  done  in  the 
French  than  the  English  manner.  The  courtesy,  as  far  as 
it  goes,  is  a  good,  and  far  better  than  nothing,  —  though,  of 
course,  one  would  rather  have  substantial  good  with  it.  If 
one  must  be  robbed,  one  would  rather  have  one's  money 
wheedled  away  agreeably,  with  kisses  and  bonbons,  than  be 
knocked  down  and  trampled  upon." 

"  The  mistake  that  is  made  on  this  subject,"  said  I,  "  is 
in  comparing,  as  people  generally  do,  a  polished  rascal  with 
a  boorish  good  man ;  but  the  polished  rascal  should  be  com 
pared  with  the  polished  good  man,  and  the  boorish  rascal 
with  the  boorish  good  man,  and  then  we  get  the  true  value 
of  the  article. 

"It  is  true,  as  a  general  rule,  that  those  races  of  men 
that  are  most  distinguished  for  outward  urbanity  and  cour 
tesy  are  the  least  distinguished  for  truth  and  sincerity  ;  and 
hence  the  well-known  alliterations,  ( fair  and  false/  '  smooth 
and  slippery.7  The  fair  and  false  Greek,  the  polished  and 
wily  Italian,  the  courteous  and  deceitful  Frenchman,  are 
associations  which,  to  the  strong,  downright,  courageous 
Anglo-Saxon,  make  up-and-down  rudeness  and  blunt  dis 
courtesy  a  type  of  truth  and  honesty. 

"  No  one  can  read  French  literature  without  feeling  how 
the  element  of  courtesy  pervades  every  department  of  life, 
—  how  carefully  people  avoid  being  personally  disagreeable 
in  their  intercourse.  A  domestic  quarrel,  if  we  may  trust 
French  plays,  is  carried  on  with  all  the  refinements  of  good 
breeding,  and  insults  are  given  with  elegant  civility.  It 
seems  impossible  to  translate  into  French  the  direct  and 
downright  brutalities  which  the  English  tongue  allows. 
The  whole  intercourse  of  life  is  arranged  on  the  under 
standing  that  all  personal  contacts  shall  be  smooth  and 
civil,  and  such  as  to  obviate  the  necessity  of  personal  jostle 
and  jar. 


434  LITTLE   FOXES 

"  Does  a  Frenchman  engage  a  clerk  or  other  employee, 
and  afterwards  hear  a  report  to  his  disadvantage,  the  last 
thing  he  would  think  of  would  be  to  tell  a  downright  un 
pleasant  truth  to  the  man.  He  writes  him  a  civil  note,  and 
tells  him,  that,  in  consequence  of  an  unexpected  change  of 
business,  he  shall  not  need  an  assistant  in  that  department, 
and  much  regrets  that  this  will  deprive  him  of  Monsieur's 
agreeable  society,  etc. 

"  A  more  striking  example  cannot  be  found  of  this  sort 
of  intercourse  than  the  representation  in  the  life  of  Madame 
George  Sand  of  the  proceedings  between  her  father  and  his 
mother.  There  is  all  the  romance  of  affection  between  this 
mother  and  son.  He  writes  her  the  most  devoted  letters, 
he  kisses  her  hand  on  every  page,  he  is  the  very  image  of  a 
gallant,  charming,  lovable  son,  while  at  the  same  time  he  is 
secretly  making  arrangements  for  a  private  marriage  with  a 
woman  of  low  rank  and  indifferent  reputation,  —  a  marriage 
which  he  knows  would  be  like  death  to  his  mother.  He 
marries,  lives  with  his  wife,  has  one  or  two  children  by  her, 
before  he  will  pain  the  heart  of  his  adored  mother  by  telling 
her  the  truth.  The  adored  mother  suspects  her  son,  but  no 
trace  of  the  suspicion  appears  in  her  letters  to  him.  The 
questions  which  an  English  parent  would  level  at  him  point- 
blank  she  is  entirely  too  delicate  to  address  to  her  dear 
Maurice ;  but  she  puts  them  to  the  Prefect  of  Police,  and 
ferrets  out  the  marriage  through  legal  documents,  while  yet 
no  trace  of  this  knowledge  dims  the  affectionateness  of  her 
letters,  or  the  serenity  of  her  reception  of  her  son  when  he 
comes  to  bestow  on  her  the  time  which  he  can  spare  from 
his  family  cares.  In  an  English  or  American  family  there 
would  have  been  a  battle  royal,  an  open  rupture ;  whereas 
this  courteous  son  and  mother  go  on  for  years  with  this 
polite  drama,  she  pretending  to  be  deceived  while  she  is 
not,  and  he  supposing  that  he  is  sparing  her  feelings  by  the 
deception. 


DISCOUKTESY  435 

"  Now  it  is  the  reaction  from  such  a  style  of  life  on  the 
truthful  Anglo-Saxon  nature  that  leads  to  an  undervaluing 
of  courtesy,  as  if  it  were  of  necessity  opposed  to  sincerity. 
But  it  does  not  follow,  because  all  is  not  gold  that  glitters, 
that  nothing  that  glitters  is  gold,  and  because  courtesy  and 
delicacy  of  personal  intercourse  are  often  perverted  to  deceit, 
that  they  are  not  valuable  allies  of  truth.  No  woman  would 
prefer  a  slippery,  plausible  rascal  to  a  rough,  unceremonious 
honest  man ;  but  of  two  men  equally  truthful  and  affection 
ate,  every  woman  would  prefer  the  courteous  one.7' 

"  Well,"  said  Bob,  "  there  is  a  loathsome,  sickly  stench  of 
cowardice  and  distrust  about  all  this  kind  of  French  deli 
cacy  that  is  enough  to  drive  an  honest  fellow  to  the  other 
extreme.  True  love  ought  to  be  a  robust,  hardy  plant,  that 
can  stand  a  free  outdoor  life  of  sun  and  wind  and  rain. 
People  who  are  too  delicate  and  courteous  ever  fully  to 
speak  their  minds  to  each  other  are  apt  to  have  stagnant 
residuums  of  unpleasant  feelings  which  breed  all  sorts  of 
gnats  and  mosquitos.  My  rule  is,  Say  everything  out  as 
you  go  along  ;  have  your  little  tiffs,  and  get  over  them ; 
jar  and  jolt  and  rub  a  little,  and  learn  to  take  rubs  and 
bear  jolts. 

"HI  take  less  thought  and  use  less  civility  of  expres 
sion,  in  announcing  to  Marianne  that  her  coffee  is  roasted 
too  much,  than  I  did  to  old  Mrs.  Pollux  when  I  boarded  with 
her,  it 's  because  I  take  it  Marianne  is  somewhat  more  a 
part  of  myself  than  old  Mrs  Pollux  was,  —  that  there  is  an 
intimacy  and  confidence  between  us  which  will  enable  us 
to  use  the  shorthand  of  life,  —  that  she  will  not  fall  into  a 
passion  or  fly  into  hysterics,  but  will  merely  speak  to  cook, 
in  good  time.  If  I  don't  thank  her  for  mending  my  glove 
in  just  the  style  that  I  did  when  I  was  a  lover,  it  is  because 
now  she  does  that  sort  of  thing  for  me  so  often  that  it 
would  be  a  downright  bore  to  her  to  have  me  always  on  my 
knees  about  it.  All  that  I  could  think  of  to  say  about  her 


436  LITTLE  FOXES 

graceful  handiness  and  her  delicate  needlework  has  been 
said  so  often,  and  is  so  well  understood,  that  it  has  entirely 
lost  the  zest  of  originality.  Marianne  and  I  have  had 
sundry  little  battles,  in  which  the  victory  came  out  on  both 
sides,  each  of  us  thinking  the  better  of  the  other  for  the 
vigor  and  spirit  with  which  we  conducted  matters,  and  our 
habit  of  perfect  plain-speaking  and  truth-telling  to  each  other 
is  better  than  all  the  delicacies  that  ever  were  hatched  up  in 
the  hot-bed  of  French  sentiment." 

"  Perfectly  true,  perfectly  right,"  said  I.  "  Every  word 
good  as  gold.  Truth  before  all  things ;  sincerity  before  all 
things  :  pure,  clear,  diamond-bright  sincerity  is  of  more  value 
than  the  gold  of  Ophir  ;  the  foundation  of  all  love  must 
rest  here.  How  those  people  do  who  live  in  the  nearest  and 
dearest  intimacy  with  friends  who  they  believe  will  lie  to 
them  for  any  purpose,  even  the  most  refined  and  delicate, 
is  a  mystery  to  me.  If  I  once  know  that  my  wife  or  my 
friend  will  tell  me  only  what  they  think  will  be  agreeable  to 
me,  then  I  am  at  once  lost,  my  way  is  a  pathless  quicksand. 
But  all  this  being  premised,  I  still  say  that  we  Anglo- 
Saxons  might  improve  our  domestic  life,  if  we  would  graft 
upon  the  strong  stock  of  its  homely  sincerity  the  courteous 
graces  of  the  French  character. 

"  If  anybody  wishes  to  know  exactly  what  I  mean  by  this, 
let  him  read  the  Memoir  of  De  Tocqueville,  whom  I  take 
to  be  the  representative  of  the  French  ideal  man ;  and  cer 
tainly  the  kind  of  family  life  which  his  domestic  letters 
disclose  has  a  delicacy  and  a  beauty  which  adorn  its  solid 
worth. 

"  What  I  have  to  say  on  this  matter  is,  that  it  is  very 
dangerous  for  any  individual  man  or  any  race  of  men  continu 
ally  to  cry  up  the  virtues  to  which  they  are  constitutionally 
inclined,  and  to  be  constantly  dwelling  with  reprobation  on 
faults  to  which  they  have  no  manner  of  temptation. 

"  I  think  that  we  of  the  English  race  may  set  it  down  as 


DISCOURTESY  437 

a  general  rule,  that  we  are  in  no  danger  of  becoming  hypo 
crites  in  domestic  life  through  an  extra  sense  of  politeness, 
and  in  some  danger  of  becoming  boors  from  a  rough,  uncul 
tivated  instinct  of  sincerity.  But  to  bring  the  matter  to 
a  practical  point,  I  will  specify  some  particulars  in  which 
the  courtesy  we  show  to  strangers  might  with  advantage  be 
grafted  into  our  home  life. 

"  In  the  first  place,  then,  let  us  watch  our  course  when 
we  are  entertaining  strangers  whose  good  opinion  we  wish 
to  propitiate.  We  dress  ourselves  with  care,  we  study  what 
it  will  be  agreeable  to  say,  we  do  not  suffer  our  natural  lazi 
ness  to  prevent  our  being  very  alert  in  paying  small  atten 
tions,  we  start  across  the  room  for  an  easier  chair,  we  stoop 
to  pick  up  the  fan,  we  search  for  the  mislaid  newspaper, 
and  all  this  for  persons  in  whom  we  have  no  particular  in 
terest  beyond  the  passing  hour  ;  while  with  those  friends 
whom  we  love  and  respect  we  too  often  sit  in  our  old  faded 
habiliments,  and  let  them  get  their  own  chair,  and  look  up 
their  own  newspaper,  and  fight  their  own  way  daily,  without 
any  of  this  preventing  care. 

"  In  the  matter  of  personal  adornment,  especially,  there 
are  a  great  many  people  who  are  chargeable  with  the  same 
fault  that  I  have  already  spoken  of  in  reference  to  house 
hold  arrangements.  They  have  a  splendid  wardrobe  for  com 
pany,  and  a  shabby  and  sordid  one  for  domestic  life.  A 
woman  puts  all  her  income  into  party  dresses,  and  thinks 
anything  will  do  to  wear  at  home.  All  her  old  tumbled 
finery,  her  frayed,  dirty  silks  and  soiled  ribbons,  are  made  to 
do  duty  for  her  hours  of  intercourse  with  her  dearest  friends. 
Some  seem  to  be  really  principled  against  wearing  a  hand 
some  dress  in  e very-day  life  ;  they  '  cannot  afford J  to  be 
well-dressed  in  private.  Now  what  I  should  recommend 
would  be  to  take  the  money  necessary  for  one  or  two  party 
dresses  and  spend  it  upon  an  appropriate  and  tasteful  home 
toilette,  and  to  make  it  an  avowed  object  to  look  prettily  at 
home. 


438  LITTLE   FOXES 

"  We  men  are  a  sort  of  stupid,  blind  animals  :  we  know 
when  we  are  pleased,  but  we  don't  know  what  it  is  that 
pleases  us ;  we  say  we  don't  care  anything  about  flowers, 
but  if  there  is  a  flower-garden  under  our  window,  somehow 
or  other  we  are  dimly  conscious  of  it,  and  feel  that  there 
is  something  pleasant  there  ;  and  so  when  our  wives  and 
daughters  are  prettily  and  tastefully  attired,  we  know  it, 
and  it  gladdens  our  life  far  more  than  we  are  perhaps  aware 
of." 

"  Well,  papa,"  said  Jenny,  "  I  think  the  men  ought  to 
take  just  as  much  pains  to  get  themselves  up  nicely  after 
marriage  as  the  women.  I  think  there  are  such  things 
as  tumbled  shirt-collars  and  frowsy  hair  and  muddy  shoes 
brought  into  the  domestic  sanctuary,  as  well  as  frayed  silks 
and  dirty  ribbons." 

"  Certainly,"  I  said  ;  "  but  you  know  we  are  the  natural 
Hottentot,  and  you  are  the  missionaries  who  are  to  keep  us 
from  degenerating ;  we  are  the  clumsy,  old,  blind  Vulcan, 
and  you  the  fair  Cythereas,  the  bearers  of  the  magic  cestus, 
and  therefore  it  is  to  you  that  this  head  more  particularly 
belongs. 

"  Now  I  maintain  that  in  family  life  there  should  be  an 
effort  not  only  to  be  neat  and  decent  in  the  arrangement  of 
our  person,  but  to  be  also  what  the  French  call  coquette,  — 
or  to  put  it  in  plain  English,  there  should  be  an  endeavor 
to  make  ourselves  look  handsome  in  the  eyes  of  our  dearest 
friends. 

"  Many  worthy  women,  who  would  not  for  the  world  be 
found  wanting  in  the  matter  of  personal  neatness,  seem 
somehow  to  have  the  notion  that  any  study  of  the  arts  of 
personal  beauty  in  family  life  is  unmatronly ;  they  buy  their 
clothes  with  simple  reference  to  economy,  and  have  them 
made  up  without  any  question  of  becomingness ;  and  hence 
marriage  sometimes  transforms  a  charming,  trim,  tripping 
young  lady  into  a  waddling  matron  whose  every-day  toilette 


DISCOURTESY  439 

suggests  only  the  idea  of  a  feather-bed  tied  round  with  a 
string.  For  my  part,  I  do  not  believe  that  the  summary 
banishment  of  the  Graces  from  the  domestic  circle  as  soon 
as  the  first  baby  makes  its  appearance  is  at  all  conducive  to 
domestic  affection.  Nor  do  I  think  that  there  is  any  need 
of  so  doing.  These  good  housewives  are  in  danger,  like 
other  saints,  of  falling  into  the  error  of  neglecting  the  body, 
through  too  much  thoughtfulness  for  others  and  too  little 
for  themselves.  If  a  woman  ever  had  any  attractiveness, 
let  her  try  and  keep  it,  setting  it  down  as  one  of  her  do 
mestic  talents.  As  for  my  erring  brothers  who  violate  the 
domestic  sanctuary  by  tousled  hair,  tumbled  linen,  and 
muddy  shoes,  I  deliver  them  over  to  Miss  Jenny  without 
benefit  of  clergy. 

"  My  second  head  is,  that  there  should  be  in  family  life 
the  same  delicacy  in  the  avoidance  of  disagreeable  topics 
that  characterizes  the  intercourse  of  refined  society  among 
strangers. 

"  I  do  not  think  that  it  makes  family  life  more  sincere, 
or  any  more  honest,  to  have  the  members  of  a  domestic  cir 
cle  feel  a  freedom  to  blurt  out  in  each  other's  faces,  without 
thought  or  care,  all  the  disagreeable  things  that  may  occur 
to  them :  as,  for  example,  '  How  horridly  you  look  this 
morning  !  What 's  the  matter  with  you  ?  '  —  '  Is  there  a 
pimple  coming  on  your  nose  ?  or  what  is  that  spot  ? '  — 
'  What  made  you  buy  such  a  dreadfully  unbecoming  dress  ? 
It  sets  like  a  witch  !  Who  cut  it  ?  '  —  '  What  makes  you 
wear  that  pair  of  old  shoes  ?  '  —  '  Hollo,  Bess  !  is  that  your 
party-rig  ?  I  should  think  you  were  going  out  for  a  walking 
advertisement  of  a  flower-store  ! '  —  Observations  of  this 
kind  between  husbands  and  wives,  brothers  and  sisters,  or 
intimate  friends,  do  not  indicate  sincerity,  but  obtuseness ; 
and  the  person  who  remarks  on  the  pimple  on  your  nose  is 
in  many  cases  just  as  apt  to  deceive  you  as  the  most  accom 
plished  Frenchwoman  who  avoids  disagreeable  topics  in  your 
presence. 


440  LITTLE   FOXES 

"  Many  families  seem  to  think  that  it  is  a  proof  of  family 
union  and  good-nature  that  they  can  pick  each  other  to 
pieces,  joke  on  each  other's  feelings  and  infirmities,  and  treat 
each  other  with  a  general  tally-ho-ing  rudeness  without  any 
offense  or  ill-feeling.  If  there  is  a  limping  sister,  there  is 
a  never-failing  supply  of  jokes  on  '  Dot-and-go-one ; '  and 
so  with  other  defects  and  peculiarities  of  mind  or  manners. 
Now  the  perfect  good-nature  and  mutual  confidence  which 
allow  all  this  liberty  are  certainly  admirable  ;  but  the  lib 
erty  itself  is  far  from  making  home  life  interesting  or  agree 
able. 

"  Jokes  upon  personal  or  mental  infirmities,  and  a  general 
habit  of  saying  things  in  jest  which  would  be  the  height  of 
rudeness  if  said  in  earnest,  are  all  habits  which  take  from 
the  delicacy  of  family  affection. 

"  In  all  this  rough  playing  with  edge-tools  many  are  hit 
and  hurt  who  are  ashamed  or  afraid  to  complain.  And  after 
all,  what  possible  good  or  benefit  comes  from  it  ?  Courage 
to  say  disagreeable  things,  when  it  is  necessary  to  say  them 
for  the  highest  good  of  the  person  addressed,  is  a  sublime 
quality  ;  but  a  careless  habit  of  saying  them,  in  the  mere 
freedom  of  family  intercourse,  is  certainly  as  great  a  spoiler 
of  the  domestic  vines  as  any  fox  running. 

"There  is  one  point  under  this  head  which  I  enlarge 
upon  for  the  benefit  of  my  own  sex :  I  mean  table  criti 
cisms.  The  conduct  of  housekeeping,  in  the  present  state 
of  domestic  service,  certainly  requires  great  allowance ;  and 
the  habit  of  unceremonious  comment  on  the  cooking  and 
appointments  of  the  table,  in  which  some  husbands  habitu 
ally  allow  themselves,  is  the  most  unpardonable  form  of 
domestic  rudeness.  If  a  wife  has  philosophy  enough  not  to 
mind  it,  so  much  the  worse  for  her  husband,  as  it  confirms 
him  in  an  unseemly  habit,  embarrassing  to  guests  and  a  bad 
example  to  children.  If  she  has  no  feelings  that  he  is 
bound  to  respect,  he  should  at  least  respect  decorum  and 


DISCOURTESY  441 

good  taste,  and  confine  the  discussion  of  such  matters  to 
private  intercourse,  and  not  initiate  every  guest  and  child 
into  the  grating  and  greasing  of  the  wheels  of  the  domestic 
machinery. 

"  Another  thing  in  which  families  might  imitate  the 
politeness  of  strangers  is  a  wise  reticence  with  regard  to 
the  asking  of  questions  and  the  offering  of  advice. 

"A  large  family  includes  many  persons  of  different 
tastes,  habits,  modes  of  thinking  and  acting,  and  it  would 
be  wise  and  well  to  leave  to  each  one  that  measure  of 
freedom  in  these  respects  which  the  laws  of  general  polite 
ness  require.  Brothers  and  sisters  may  love  each  other 
very  much,  and  yet  not  enough  to  make  joint-stock  of  all 
their  ideas,  plans,  wishes,  schemes,  friendships.  There  are 
in  every  family  circle  individuals  whom  a  certain  sensitive 
ness  of  nature  inclines  to  quietness  and  reserve ;  and  there 
are  very  well-meaning  families  where  no  such  quietness  or 
reserve  is  possible.  Nobody  can  be  let  alone,  nobody  may 
have  a  secret,  nobody  can  move  in  any  direction,  without 
a  host  of  inquiries  and  comments.  ( Who  is  your  letter 
from?  Let's  see.' — '  My  letter  is  from  So-and-So.'  — 
'He  writing  to  you  !  I  didn't  know  that.  What 's  he  writ 
ing  about  ? '  — '  Where  did  you  go  yesterday  ?  What  did 
you  buy  ?  What  did  you  give  for  it  ?  What  are  you 
going  to  do  with  it  ?  '  —  i  Seems  to  me  that 's  an  odd  way 
to  do.  I  should  n't  do  so. '  —  '  Look  here,  Mary  ;  Sarah  's 
going  to  have  a  dress  of  silk  tissue  this  spring.  Now  I 
think  they  're  too  dear,  —  don't  you  ?  ' 

"  I  recollect  seeing  in  some  author  a  description  of  a  true 
gentleman,  in  which,  among  other  traits,  he  was  character 
ized  as  the  man  that  asks  the  fewest  questions.  This  trait 
of  refined  society  might  be  adopted  into  home  life  in  a  far 
greater  degree  than  it  is,  and  make  it  far  more  agreeable. 

"  If  there  is  perfect  unreserve  and  mutual  confidence, 
let  it  show  itself  in  free  communications  coming  unsolicited. 


442  LITTLE   FOXES 

It  may  fairly  be  presumed  that,  if  there  is  anything  our 
intimate  friends  wish  us  to  know,  they  will  tell  us  of  it,  — 
and  that  when  we  are  on  close  and  confidential  terms  with 
persons,  and  there  are  topics  on  which  they  do  not  speak  to 
us,  it  is  because  for  some  reason  they  prefer  to  keep  silence 
concerning  them ;  and  the  delicacy  that  respects  a  friend's 
silence  is  one  of  the  charms  of  life. 

"  As  with  the  asking  of  questions,  so  with  the  offering  of 
advice,  there  should  be  among  friends  a  wise  reticence. 

"  Some  families  are  always  calling  each  other  to  account 
at  every  step  of  the  way.  '  What  did  you  put  on  that  dress 
for  ?  Why  did  n't  you  wear  that  ?  '  —  '  What  did  you  do 
this  for  ?  Why  did  n't  you  do  that  ?  '  —  <  Now  I  should 
advise  you  to  do  thus  and  so.'  —  And  these  comments  and 
criticisms  and  advices  are  accompanied  with  an  energy  of 
feeling  that  makes  it  rather  difficult  to  disregard  them. 

"  Now  it  is  no  matter  how  dear  and  how  good  our  friends 
may  be,  if  they  abridge  our  liberty  and  fetter  the  free  exer 
cise  of  our  life,  it  is  inevitable  that  we  shall  come  to  enjoy 
ing  ourselves  much  better  where  they  are  not  than  where 
they  are  ;  and  one  of  the  reasons  why  brothers  and  sisters 
or  children  so  often  diverge  from  the  family  circle  in  the 
choice  of  confidants  is,  that  extraneous  friends  are  bound  by 
certain  laws  of  delicacy  not  to  push  inquiries,  criticisms,  or 
advice  too  far. 

"  Parents  would  do  well  to  remember  in  time  when  their 
children  have  grown  up  into  independent  human  beings, 
and  use  with  a  wise  moderation  those  advisory  and  admoni 
tory  powers  with  which  they  guided  their  earlier  days. 
Let  us  give  everybody  a  right  to  live  his  own  life,  as  far  as 
possible,  and  avoid  imposing  our  own  personalities  on  an 
other. 

"  If  I  were  to  picture  a  perfect  family,  it  should  be  a 
union  of  people  of  individual  and  marked  character,  who 
through  love  have  come  to  a  perfect  appreciation  of  each 


DISCOURTESY  443 

other,  and  who  so  wisely  understand  themselves  and  one 
another  that  each  may  move  freely  along  his  or  her  own 
track  without  jar  or  jostle,  —  a  family  where  affection  is 
always  sympathetic  and  receptive,  but  never  inquisitive, 
where  all  personal  delicacies'  are  respected,  and  where  there 
is  a  sense  of  privacy  and  seclusion  in  following  one's  own 
course,  unchallenged  by  the  watchfulness  of  others,  yet  withal 
a  sense  of  society  and  support  in  a  knowledge  of  the  kind 
dispositions  and  interpretations  of  all  around. 

"In  treating  of  family  discourtesies,  I  have  avoided 
speaking  of  those  which  come  from  ill -temper  and  brute 
selfishness,  because  these  are  sins  more  than  mistakes.  An 
angry  person  is  generally  impolite  ;  and  where  contention 
and  ill-will  are,  there  can  be  no  courtesy.  What  I  have 
mentioned  are  rather  the  lackings  of  good  and  often  admir 
able  people,  who  merely  need  to  consider  in  their  family  life 
a  little  more  of  whatsoever  things  are  lovely.  With  such 
the  mere  admission  of  anything  to  be  pursued  as  a  duty 
secures  the  purpose  ;  only  in  their  somewhat  earnest  pursuit 
of  the  substantials  of  life  they  drop  and  pass  by  the  little 
things  that  give  it  sweetness  and  perfume.  To  such  a  word 
is  enough,  and  that  word  is  said.''' 


VII 

EXACTINGNESS 

AT  length  I  am  arrived  at  my  seventh  fox,  —  the  last  of 
the  domestic  quadrupeds  against  which  I  have  vowed  a  cru 
sade,  —  and  here  opens  the  chase  of  him.  I  call  him 

EXACTINGNESS, 

and  having  done  this,  I  drop  the  metaphor,  for  fear  of 
chasing  it  beyond  the  rules  of  graceful  rhetoric,  and  shall 
proceed  to  define  the  trait. 

All  the  other  domestic  faults  of  which  I  have  treated 
have  relation  to  the  manner  in  which  the  ends  of  life  are 
pursued  ;  but  this  one  is  an  underlying,  false,  and  diseased 
state  of  conception  as  to  the  very  ends  and  purposes  of  life 
itself. 

If  a  piano  is  tuned  to  exact  concert  pitch,  the  majority  of 
voices  must  fall  below  it ;  for  which  reason,  most  people 
indulgently  allow  their  pianos  to  be  tuned  a  little  below  this 
point,  in  accommodation  to  the  average  power  of  the  human 
voice.  Persons  of  only  ordinary  powers  of  voice  would  be 
considered  absolute  monomaniacs,  who  should  insist  on  hav 
ing  their  pianos  tuned  to  accord  with  any  abstract  notion 
of  propriety  or  perfection,  —  rendering  themselves  wretched 
by  persistently  singing  all  their  pieces  miserably  out  of  tune 
in  consequence. 

Yet  there  are  persons  who  keep  the  requirements  of  life 
strained  up  always  at  concert  pitch,  and  are  thus  worn  out 
and  made  miserable  all  their  days  by  the  grating  of  a  per 
petual  discord. 


EXACTINGNESS  445 

There  is  a  faculty  of  the  human  mind  to  which  phre 
nologists  have  given  the  name  of  Ideality,  which  is  at  the 
foundation  of  this  exactingness.  Ideality  is  the  faculty 
by  which  we  conceive  of  and  long  for  perfection ;  and  at  a 
glance  it  will  be  seen,  that,  so  far  from  being  an  evil  ingre 
dient  of  human  nature,  it  is  the  one  element  of  progress  that 
distinguishes  man's  nature  from  that  of  the  brute.  While 
animals  go  on  from  generation  to  generation,  learning  no 
thing  and  forgetting  nothing,  practicing  their  small  circle 
of  the  arts  of  life  no  better  and  no  worse  from  year  to 
year,  man  is  driven  by  ideality  to  constant  invention  and 
alteration,  whence  come  arts,  sciences,  and  the  whole  pro 
gress  of  society.  Ideality  induces  discontent  with  present 
attainments,  possessions,  and  performances,  and  hence  come 
better  and  better  ones.  So  in  morals,  ideality  constantly  in 
cites  to  higher  and  nobler  modes  of  living  and  thinking, 
and  is  the  faculty  to  which  the  most  effective  teachings 
of  the  great  Master  of  Christianity  are  addressed.  To  be 
dissatisfied  with  present  attainments,  with  earthly  things 
and  scenes,  to  aspire  and  press  on  to  something  forever  fair, 
yet  forever  receding  before  our  steps,  —  this  is  the  teaching 
of  Christianity,  and  the  work  of  the  Christian. 

But  every  faculty  has  its  own  instinctive,  wild  growth, 
which,  like  the  spontaneous  produce  of  the  earth,  is  crude 
and  weedy. 

Revenge,  says  Lord  Bacon,  is  a  sort  of  wild  justice,  obsti 
nacy  is  untutored  firmness,  —  and  so  exactingness  is  un 
trained  ideality ;  and  a  vast  deal  of  misery,  social  and  do 
mestic,  comes  not  of  the  faculty,  but  of  its  untrained  exer 
cise. 

The  faculty  which  is  ever  conceiving  and  desiring  some 
thing  better  and  more  perfect  must  be  modified  in  its  action 
by  good  sense,  patience,  and  conscience,  or  it  induces  a  mor 
bid,  discontented  spirit,  which  courses  through  the  veins  of 
individual  and  family  life  like  a  subtle  poison. 


446  LITTLE   FOXES 

In  a  certain  neighborhood  are  two  families  whose  social 
and  domestic  animus  illustrates  the  difference  between  ideal 
ity  and  the  want  of  it. 

The  Day  tons  are  a  large,  easy-natured,  joyous  race,  hospit 
able,  kindly,  and  friendly.  Nothing  about  their  establish 
ment  is  much  above  mediocrity.  The  grounds  are  tolerably 
kept,  the  table  is  tolerably  fair,  the  servants  moderately 
good,  and  the  family  character  and  attainments  of  the  same 
average  level. 

Mrs.  Dayton  is  a  decent  housekeeper,  and  so  her  bread 
be  not  sour,  her  butter  not  frowy,  the  food  abundant  and  the 
tablecloth  and  dishes  clean,  she  troubles  her  head  little  with 
the  niceties  and  refinements  of  the  menage.  She  accepts 
her  children  as  they  come  from  the  hand  of  nature^  simply 
opening  her  eyes  to  discern  what  they  are,  never  raising  the 
query  what  she  would  have  had  them,  —  forming  no  very 
high  expectations  concerning  them  and  well  content  with 
whatever  develops. 

A  visitor  in  the  family  can  easily  see  a  thousand  defects 
in  the  conduct  of  affairs,  in  the  management  of  the  children, 
and  in  this,  that  and  the  other  portion  of  the  household 
arrangements ;  but  he  can  see  and  feel,  also,  a  perfect  com 
fortableness  in  the  domestic  atmosphere  that  almost  atones 
for  any  defects.  He  can  see  that  in  a  thousand  respects 
things  might  be  better  done,  if  the  family  were  not  perfectly 
content  to  have  them  as  they  are,  and  that  each  individual 
member  might  make  higher  attainments  in  various  directions, 
were  there  not  such  entire  satisfaction  with  what  is  already 
attained. 

Trying  each  other  by  very  moderate  standards  and  measure 
ments,  there  is  great  mutual  complacency.  The  oldest  boy 
does  not  get  an  appointment  in  college,  —  they  never  ex 
pected  he  would ;  but  he  was  a  respectable  scholar,  and  they 
receive  him  with  acclamations  such  as  another  family  would 
bestow  on  a  valedictorian.  The  daughters  do  not  profess, 


EXACTINGNESS  447 

as  we  are  told,  to  draw  like  artists,  but  some  very  moderate 
performances  in  the  line  of  the  fine  arts  are  dwelt  on  with 
much  innocent  pleasure.  They  thrum  a  few  tunes  on  the 
piano,  and  the  whole  family  listen  and  approve.  All  unite 
in  singing  in  a  somewhat  uncultured  manner  a  few  psalm- 
tunes  or  songs,  and  take  more  comfort  in  them  than  many 
amateurs  do  in  their  well-drilled  performances. 

So  goes  the  world  with  the  Daytons;  and  when  you 
visit  them,  if  you  often  feel  that  you  could  ask  more  and 
suggest  much  improvement,  yet  you  cannot  help  enjoying 
the  quiet  satisfaction  which  breathes  around  you. 

Now  right  across  the  way  from  the  Daytons  live  the 
Mores  ;  and  the  Mores  are  the  very  opposites  of  the  Day- 
tons.  Everything  about  their  establishment  is  brought  to 
the  highest  point  of  culture.  The  carriage  drive  never 
shows  a  weed,  the  lawn  is  velvet,  the  flower  beds  ever- 
blooming,  the  fruit-trees  and  vines  grow  exactly  like  the 
patterns  in  the  best  pomological  treatises.  Within  doors 
the  housekeeping  is  faultless,  —  all  seems  to  be  moving  in 
time  and  tune,  the  table  is  more  than  good,  it  is  super 
lative,  every  article  is  in  its  way  a  model ;  the  children  ap 
pear  to  you  to  be  growing  up  after  the  most  patent-right 
method,  duly  trained,  snipped,  and  cultured,  like  the  pear- 
trees  and  grapevines.  Nothing  is  left  to  accident,  or  done 
without  much  laborious  consideration  of  the  best  manner  of 
doing  it  ;  and  the  consequences,  in  the  eyes  of  their  simple, 
unsophisticated  neighbors,  are  very  wonderful. 

Nevertheless  this  is  not  a  happy  family.  All  their  per 
fections  do  not  begin  to  afford  them  one  tithe  of  the  satis 
faction  that  the  Daytons  derive  from  their  ragged  and  scram 
bling  performances. 

The  two  daughters,  Jane  and  Maria,  had  naturally  very 
sweet  voices,  and  when  they  were  little,  trilled  tunes  in  a 
very  pleasant  and  bird-like  manner.  But  now,  having  been 
instructed  by  the  best  masters,  and  heard  the  very  first  ar- 


448  LITTLE   FOXES 

tists,  they  never  sing  or  play  ;  the  piano  is  shut,  and  their 
voices  are  dumb.  If  you  request  a  song,  they  tell  you  that 
they  never  sing  now ;  papa  has  such  an  exquisite  taste,  he 
takes  no  interest  in  any  common  music ;  in  short,  having 
heard  Jenny  Lind,  Grisi,  Alboni,  Mario,  and  others  of  the 
tuneful  shell,  this  family  have  concluded  to  abide  in  silence. 
As  to  any  music  that  they  could  make,  it  isn't  to  be 
thought  of. 

For  the  same  reason,  the  daughters,  after  attending  a 
quarter  or  two  on  the  drawing  -  exercises  of  a  celebrated 
teacher,  threw  up  their  pencils  in  disgust,  and  tore  up  very 
pretty  and  agreeable  sketches  which  were  the  marvel  of 
their  good-natured  admiring  neighbors.  If  they  could  draw 
like  Signor  Scratchalini,  if  they  could  hope  to  become  per 
fect  artists,  they  tell  you,  they  would  have  persevered ;  but 
they  have  taken  lessons  enough  to  learn  that  drawing  is 
the  labor  of  a  lifetime,  and,  not  having  a  lifetime  to  give 
to  it,  they  resolve  to  do  nothing  at  all. 

They  have  also,  for  a  similar  reason,  given  up  letter- 
writing.  If  their  chirography  were  as  elegant  as  Charlotte 
Cushman's,  —  if  they  were  perfect  mistresses  of  polite  Eng 
lish,  if  they  were  gifted  with  wit,  humor,  and  fancy,  like 
the  first  masters  of  style,  —  they  would  take  pleasure  in 
epistolary  composition,  and  be  good  correspondents;  but 
anything  short  of  that  is  so  intolerable,  that,  except  in  cases 
of  life  and  death  or  urgent  business,  you  cannot  get  a  line 
out  of  them.  Yet  they  write  very  fair,  agreeable,  womanly 
letters,  and  would  write  much  better  ones,  if  they  allowed 
themselves  a  little  more  practice. 

Mrs.  More  is  devoured  by  care.  She  sits  with  a  clouded 
brow  in  her  elegant,  well-regulated  house  ;  and  when  you 
talk  with  her,  you  are  surprised  to  learn  that  everything 
in  it  is  in  the  most  dreadful  disorder  from  one  end  to  the 
other.  You  ask  for  particulars,  and  find  that  the  disorder 
has  relation  to  exquisite  standards  of  the  ways  of  doing 


EXACTINGNESS  449 

things,  derived  from  observation  of  life  in  the  most  sub 
divided  state  of  European  service,  —  to  all  of  which  she 
has  not  as  yet  been  able  to  raise  her  domestics.  You  com 
pliment  her  on  her  cook,  and  she  responds,  in  plain 
tive  accents,  "  She  can  do  a  few  things  decently,  but  she  is 
nothing  of  a  cook."  You  refer  with  enthusiasm  to  her 
bread,  her  coffee,  her  muffins  and  hot  rolls,  and  she  listens 
and  sighs.  "  Yes,"  she  admits,  "  these  are  eatable,  —  not 
bad  ;  but  you  should  have  seen  the  rolls  at  a  certain  cafe 
in  Paris,  and  the  bread  at  a  certain  nobleman's  in  England, 
where  they  had  a  bakery  in  the  castle,  and  a  French  baker, 
who  did  nothing  all  the  while  but  to  refine  and  perfect  the 
idea  of  bread.  When  she  thinks  of  these  things,  every 
thing  in  comparison  is  so  coarse  and  rough  !  —  but  then  she 
has  learned  to  be  comfortable."  Thus,  in  every  depart 
ment  of  housekeeping,  to  this  too  well-instructed  person, 

"Hills  peep  o'er  hills,  and  Alps  on  Alps  arise." 

Not  a  thing  in  her  wide  and  apparently  beautifully  kept 
establishment  is  ever  done  well  enough  to  elicit  from  her 
more  than  a  sigh  of  toleration.  "  I  suppose  it  must  do," 
she  faintly  breathes,  when  poor  human  nature,  having  tried 
and  tried  again,  evidently  has  got  to  the  boundaries  of  its 
capabilities  ;  "  you  may  let  it  go,  Jane  ;  I  never  expect  to 
be  suited." 

The  poor  woman,  in  the  midst  of  possessions  and  attain 
ments  which  excite  the  envy  of  her  neighbors,  is  utterly 
restless  and  wretched,  and  feels  herself  always  baffled  and 
unsuccessful.  Her  exacting  nature  makes  her  dissatisfied 
with  herself  in  everything  that  she  undertakes,  and  equally 
dissatisfied  with  others.  In  the  whole  family  there  is  little 
of  that  pleasure  which  comes  from  the  consciousness  of  mu 
tual  admiration  and  esteem,  because  each  one  is  pitched  to 
so  exquisite  a  tone  that  each  is  afraid  to  touch  another  for 
fear  of  making  discord.  They  are  afraid  of  each  other  every 
where.  They  cannot  sing  to  each  other,  play  to  each  other, 


450  LITTLE   FOXES 

write  to  each  other  ;  they  cannot  even  converse  together 
with  any  freedom,  because  each  knows  that  the  others  are 
so  dismally  well  informed  and  critically  instructed. 

Though  all  agree  in  a  secret  contempt  for  their  neighbors 
over  the  way,  as  living  in  a  most  heathenish  state  of  igno 
rant  contentment,  yet  it  is  a  fact  that  the  elegant  brother 
John  will  often,  on  the  sly,  slip  into  the  Daytons'  to  spend 
an  evening,  and  join  them  in  singing  glees  and  catches  to 
their  old  rattling  piano,  and  have  a  jolly  time  of  it,  which 
he  remembers  in  contrast  with  the  dull,  silent  hours  at 
home.  Kate  Dayton  has  an  uncultivated  voice,  which  often 
falls  from  pitch ;  but  she  has  a  perfectly  infectious  gayety 
of  good-nature,  and  when  she  is  once  at  the  piano,  and  all 
join  in  some  merry  troll,  he  begins  to  think  that  there  may 
be  something  better  even  than  good  singing  ;  and  then  they 
have  dances  and  charades  and  games,  all  in  such  contented, 
jolly,  impromptu  ignorance  of  the  unities  of  time,  place,  and 
circumstance,  that  he  sometimes  doubts,  where  ignorance 
is  such  bliss,  whether  it  is  n't  in  truth  folly  to  be  wise. 

Jane  and  Maria  laugh  at  John  for  his  partiality  to  the 
Daytons,  and  yet  they  themselves  feel  the  same  attraction. 
At  the  Daytons'  they  somehow  find  themselves  heroines  ; 
their  drawings  are  so  admired,  their  singing  is  so  charming 
to  these  simple  ears,  that  they  are  often  beguiled  into  giv 
ing  pleasure  with  their  own  despised  acquirements  ;  and 
Jane,  somehow,  is  very  tolerant  of  the  devoted  attention  of 
Will  Dayton,  a  joyous,  honest-hearted  fellow,  whom,  in  her 
heart  of  hearts,  she  likes  none  the  worse  for  being  unexact- 
ing  and  simple  enough  to  think  her  a  wonder  of  taste  and 
accomplishments.  Will,  of  course,  is  the  farthest  possible 
from  the  Admirable  Crichtons  and  exquisite  Sir  Philip  Sid 
neys  whom  Mrs.  More  and  the  young  ladies  talk  up  at 
their  leisure,  and  adorn  with  feathers  from  every  royal  and 
celestial  bird,  when  they  are  discussing  theoretic  possible 
husbands.  He  is  not  in  any  way  distinguished,  except  for 


EXACTINGNESS  451 

a  kind  heart,  strong  native  good  sense,  and  a  manly  energy 
that  has  carried  him  straight  into  the  very  heart  of  many  a 
citadel  of  life,  before  which  the  superior  and  more  refined 
Mr.  John  had  set  himself  down,  to  deliberate  upon  the  best 
and  most  elegant  way  of  taking  it.  Will's  plain,  homely 
intelligence  has  often  in  five  minutes  disentangled  some 
ethereal  snarl  in  which  these  exquisite  Mores  had  spun 
themselves  up,  and  brought  them  to  his  own  way  of  think 
ing  by  that  sort  of  disenchanting  process  which  honest, 
practical  sense  sometimes  exerts  over  ideality. 

The  fact  is,  however,  that  in  each  of  these  families  there 
is  a  natural  defect  which  requires  something  from  the  other 
for  completeness.  Taking  happiness  as  the  standard,  the 
Daytons  have  it  as  against  the  Mores.  Taking  attainment 
as  the  standard,  the  Mores  have  it  as  against  the  Daytons. 
A  portion  of  the  discontented  ideality  of  the  Mores  would 
stimulate  the  Daytons  to  refine  and  perfect  many  things 
which  might  easily  be  made  better,  did  they  care  enough  to 
have  them  so ;  and  a  portion  of  the  Daytons'  self -satisfied 
contentment  would  make  the  attainments  and  refinements  of 
the  Mores  of  some  practical  use  in  advancing  their  own 
happiness. 

But  between  these  two  classes  of  natures  lies  another,  to 
which  has  been  given  an  equal  share  of  ideality,  —  in  which 
the  conception  and  the  desire  of  excellence  are  equally 
strong,  but  in  which  a  discriminating  common-sense  acts 
like  a  balance-wheel  in  machinery.  What  is  the  reason 
that  the  most  exacting  idealists  never  make  themselves  un 
happy  about  not  being  able  to  fly  like  a  bird  or  swim  like 
a  fish  ?  Because  common-sense  teaches  them  that  these 
accomplishments  are  so  utterly  out  of  the  question  that 
they  never  arise  to  the  mind  as  objects  of  desire.  In  these 
well-balanced  minds  we  speak  of,  common-sense  runs  an 
instinctive  line  all  through  life  between  the  attainable  and 
the  unattainable,  and  sets  the  key  of  desire  accordingly. 


452  LITTLE   FOXES 

Common-sense  teaches  that  there  is  no  one  branch  of 
human  art  or  science  in  which  perfection  is  not  a  point  for 
ever  receding.  A  botanist  gravely  assures  us,  that  to  be 
come  perfect  in  the  knowledge  of  one  branch  of  seaweeds 
would  take  all  the  time  and  strength  of  a  man  for  a  life 
time.  There  is  no  limit  to  music,  to  the  fine  arts.  There 
is  never  a  time  when  the  gardener  can  rest,  saying  that  his 
garden  is  perfect.  Housekeeping,  cooking,  sewing,  knitting 
may  all,  for  aught  we  know,  be  pushed  on  forever,  without 
exhausting  the  capabilities  for  better  doing. 

But  while  attainment  in  everything  is  endless,  circum 
stances  forbid  the  greater  part  of  human  beings  from  attain 
ing  in  any  direction  the  half  of  what  they  see  would  be  de 
sirable  ;  and  the  difference  between  the  miserable  idealist 
and  the  contented  realist  often  is,  not  that  both  do  not  see 
what  needs  to  be  done  for  perfection,  but  that,  seeing  it,  one 
is  satisfied  with  the  attainable,  and  the  other  forever  frets 
and  wears  himself  out  on  the  unattainable. 

The  principal  of  a  large  and  complicated  public  institu 
tion  was  complimented  on  maintaining  such  uniformity  of 
cheerfulness  amid  such  a  diversity  of  cares.  "  I  've  made 
up  my  mind  to  be  satisfied,  when  things  are  done  half  as 
well  as  I  would  have  them,"  was  his  answer  ;  and  the 
same  philosophy  would  apply  with  cheering  results  to  the 
domestic  sphere. 

There  is  a  saying  which  one  often  hears  among  common 
people,  that  such  and  such  a  one  are  persons  who  never 
could  be  happy,  unless  everything  went  "just  so,"  — that 
is,  in  accordance  with  their  highest  conceptions. 

When  these  persons  are  women,  and  undertake  the  sway 
of  a  home  empire,  they  are  sure  to  be  miserable,  and  to  make 
others  so  ;  for  home  is  a  place  where  by  no  kind  of  magic 
possible  to  woman  can  everything  be  always  made  to  go 
".just  so." 

We  may  read  treatises  on  education,  —  and  very  excel- 


EXACTINGNESS  453 

lent  ones  there  are.  We  may  read  very  nice  stories  illus 
trating  home  management,  in  which  book-children  and  book- 
servants  all  work  into  the  author's  plan  with  obliging 
unanimity ;  but  every  real  child  and  real  servant  is  an 
uncompromising  fact,  whose  working  into  our  ideal  of  life 
cannot  be  predicted  with  any  degree  of  certainty.  A  hus 
band  is  another  absolute  fact,  of  whose  conformity  to  any 
ideal  conceptions  no  positive  account  can  be  given.  So,  when 
a  person  has  the  most  charming  theories  of  education,  the 
most  complete  ideals  of  life,  it  is  often  his  lot  to  sit  bound 
hand  and  foot  and  see  them  all  trampled  under  the  heel  of 
opposing  circumstances. 

Nothing  is  easier  than  to  make  an  ideal  garden.  We  lay 
out  our  grounds,  dig,  plant,  transplant,  manure.  We  read 
catalogues  of  roses  till  we  are  bewildered  with  their  lustrous 
glories.  We  set  out  plum,  pear,  and  peach,  we  luxuriate 
in  advance  on  bushels  of  choicest  grapes,  and  our  theo 
retic  garden  is  Paradise  Regained.  But  in  the  actual  garden 
there  are  cut- worms  for  every  cabbage,  squash-bugs  for  all 
the  melons,  slugs  and  rose-bugs  for  the  roses,  curculios  for 
the  plums,  fire-blight  for  pears,  yellows  for  peaches,  mildewr 
for  grapes,  and  late  and  early  frosts,  droughts,  winds,  and 
hailstorms  here  and  there  for  all. 

The  garden  and  the  family  are  fair  pictures  of  each  other. 
Both  are  capable  of  the  most  ravishing  representations  on 
paper  ;  and  the  rules  and  directions  for  creating  beauty  and 
perfection  in  both  can  be  made  so  apparently  plain  that  he 
who  runneth  may  read,  and  it  would  seem  that  a  fool  need 
not  err  therein ;  and  yet  the  actual  results  are  always  halt 
ing  miles  away  behind  expectation  and  desire. 

It  would  be  an  incalculable  gain  to  domestic  happiness, 
if  people  would  begin  the  concert  of  life  with  their  instru 
ments  tuned  to  a  very  low  pitch  :  they  who  receive  the 
most  happiness  are  generally  they  who  demand  and  expect 
the  least. 


454  LITTLE   FOXES 

Ideality  often  becomes  an  insidious  mental  and  moral  dis 
ease,  acting  all  the  more  subtly  from  its  alliances  with  what 
is  highest  and  noblest  within  us.  Shall  we  not  aspire  to  be 
perfect  ?  Shall  we  be  content  with  low  measures  and  low 
standards  in  anything  ?  To  these  inquiries  there  seems  of 
course  to  be  but  one  answer  ;  yet  the  individual  driven  for 
ward  in  blind,  unreasoning  aspiration  becomes  wearied,  be 
wildered,  discontented,  restless,  fretful,  and  miserable. 

An  unhappy  person  can  never  make  others  happy.  The 
creators  and  governors  of  a  home,  who  are  themselves  rest 
less  and  inharmonious,  cannot  make  harmony  and  peace. 
This  is  the  secret  reason  why  many  a  pure,  good  conscien 
tious  person  is  only  a  source  of  uneasiness  in  family  life. 
They  are  exacting,  discontented,  unhappy  ;  and  spread  the 
discontent  and  unhappiness  about  them.  They  are,  to  begin 
with,  on  poor  terms  with  themselves  ;  they  do  not  like 
themselves  ;  they  do  not  like  their  own  appearance,  manners, 
education,  accomplishments ;  on  all  these  points  they  try 
themselves  by  ideal  standards,  and  find  themselves  wanting. 
In  morals,  in  religion,  too,  the  same  introverted  scrutiny 
detects  only  errors  and  evils,  till  all  life  seems  to  them  a 
miserable,  hopeless  failure,  and  they  wish  they  had  never 
been  born.  They  are  angry  and  disgusted  with  themselves  ; 
there  is  no  self-toleration  or  self-endurance.  And  persons 
in  a  chronic  quarrel  with  themselves  are  very  apt  to  quarrel 
with  others.  That  exacting  nature  which  has  no  patience 
with  one's  own  inevitable  frailties  and  errors  has  none  for 
those  of  others  ;  and  thus  the  great  motive  by  which  Chris 
tianity  enforces  tolerance  of  the  faults  of  others  loses  its 
hold.  There  are  people  who  make  no  allowances  either  for 
themselves  or  anybody  else,  but  are  equally  angry  and  dis 
gusted  with  both. 

Now  it  is  important  that  those  finely  strung  natures  in 
which  ideality  largely  predominates  should  begin  life  by  a 
religious  care  and  restraint  of  this  faculty.  As  the  case 


EXACTINGNESS  455 

often  stands,  however,  religion  only  intensifies  the  difficulty, 
by  adding  stringency  to  exaction  and  censoriousness,  driving 
the  subject  up  with  an  unremitting  strain  till  the  very 
cords  of  reason  sometimes  snap.  Yet,  properly  understood 
and  used,  religion  is  the  only  cure  for  the  evil  of  diseased 
ideality.  The  Christian  religion  is  the  only  one  that  ever 
proposed  to  give  to  all  human  beings,  however  various  the 
range  of  their  nature  and  desires,  the  great  underlying  gift 
of  rest.  Its  Author,  with  a  strength  of  assurance  which 
only  supreme  Divinity  can  justify,  promises  rest  to  all  per 
sons,  under  all  circumstances,  with  all  sorts  of  natures,  all 
sorts  of  wants,  and  all  sorts  of  defects.  The  invitation  is 
as  wide  as  the  human  race  :  "  Come  unto  me,  all  ye  that 
labor  and  are  heavy-laden,  and  I  will  give  you  BEST." 

Now  this  is  the  more  remarkable,  as  this  gracious  prom 
ise  is  accompanied  by  the  presentation  of  a  standard  of 
perfection  which  is  more  ideal  and  exacting  than  any  other 
that  has  ever  been  placed  before  mankind,  —  which,  in  so 
many  words,  sets  up  absolute  perfection  as  the  only  true 
goal  of  aspiration. 

The  problem  which  Jesus  proposes  to  human  nature  is 
endless  aspiration  steadied  by  endless  peace,  —  a  perfectly 
restful,  yet  unceasing  effort  after  a  good,  which  is  never  to 
be  attained  till  we  attain  a  higher  and  more  perfect  form  of 
existence.  It  is  because  this  problem  is  insolvable  by  any 
human  wisdom,  that  He  says  that  they  who  take  His  yoke 
upon  them  must  learn  of  Him,  for  He  alone  can  make  the 
perfect  yoke  easy  and  its  burden  light. 

The  first  lesson  in  this  benignant  school  must  lie  like  a 
strong,  broad  foundation  under  every  structure  on  which 
we  wish  to  rear  a  happy  life,  —  and  that  is,  that  the  full 
gratification  of  the  faculty  of  ideality  is  never  to  be  ex 
pected  in  this  present  stage  of  existence,  but  is  to  be  trans 
ferred  to  a  future  life.  Ideality,  with  its  incessant,  restless 
longings  and  yearnings,  is  snubbed  and  turned  out  of  doors 


456  LITTLE   FOXES 

by  human  philosophy,  when  philosophy  becomes  middle- 
aged  and  sulky  with  repeated  disappointments,  —  it  is  be 
rated  as  a  cheat  and  a  liar,  —  told  to  hold  its  tongue  and 
take  itself  elsewhere ;  but  Christianity  bids  it  be  of  good 
cheer,  still  to  aspire  and  hope  and  prophesy,  and  points  to 
a  future  where  all  its  dreams  shall  be  outdone  by  reality. 

A  full  faith  in  such  a  perfect  future  —  a  perfect  faith 
that  God  has  planted  in  man  no  desire  which  he  cannot 
train  to  complete  enjoyment  in  that  future  —  gives  the 
mind  rest  and  contentment  to  postpone  for  a  while  gratifi 
cations  that  will  certainly  come  at  last. 

Such  a  faith  is  better  even  than  that  native  philosophical 
good  sense  which  restrains  the  ideal  calculations  and  hopes 
of  some  ;  for  it  has  a  wider  scope  and  a  deeper  power. 

We  have  seen  in  our  time  a  woman  gifted  with  all  those 
faculties  which  rejoice  in  the  refinements  of  society,  dis 
pensing  the  elegant  hospitalities  of  a  beautiful  home,  joy 
ful  and  giving  joy.  A  sudden  reverse  has  swept  all  this 
away,  the  wealth  on  which  it  was  based  has  melted  like 
a  fog -bank  in  a  warm  morning,  and  we  have  seen  her 
with  her  little  family  beginning  life  again  in  the  log- 
cabin  of  a  Western  settlement.  We  have  seen  her  sit 
ting  in  the  door  of  the  one  room  that  took  the  place  of 
parlor,  bedroom,  nursery,  and  cheerfully  making  her  chil 
dren's  morning  toilette  by  the  help  of  the  one  tin  wash 
bowl  that  takes  the  place  of  her  well-arranged  bathing  and 
dressing  rooms ;  and  yet,  as  she  twined  their  curls  over  her 
fingers,  she  had  a  laugh  and  a  jest  and  cheerful  word  for  all. 
The  few  morning-glories  that  she  was  training  over  her  rude 
porch  seemed  as  much  a  source  of  delight  to  her  as  her 
former  greenhouse  and  garden  ;  and  the  adjustment  of  the 
one  or  two  shelves  whereon  were  the  half-dozen  books  left  of 
the  library,  her  husband's  private  papers,  and  her  own  and 
her  children's  wardrobe,  was  entered  into  daily  with  a  zeal 
ous  interest  as  if  she  had  never  known  a  wider  sphere. 


EXACTINGNESS  457 

Such  facility  of  accommodation  to  life's  reverses  is  some 
times  supposed  to  be  merely  the  result  of  a  hopeful  and 
cheerful  temperament ;  in  this  case  it  was  purely  the  work 
of  religion.  In  early  life,  this  same  woman  had  been  the 
discontented  slave  of  ideality,  had  sighed  with  vain  long 
ings  in  the  midst  of  real  and  substantial  comfort,  had  felt 
even  the  creasing  of  the  rose-leaves  of  her  pillow  an  intol 
erable  annoyance.  Now  she  has  resigned  herself  to  the 
work  and  toil  of  life  as  the  soldier  does  to  the  duties  of  the 
camp,  satisfied  to  do  and  to  bear,  enjoying  with  a  free  heart 
the  small  daily  pleasures  which  spring  up  like  wild  flowers 
amid  daily  toils  and  annoyances,  and  looking  to  the  end  of 
the  campaign  for  rest  and  congenial  scenes. 

This  woman  has  within  her  the  powers  and  gifts  of  an 
artist ;  but  her  pencils  and  her  colors  are  resolutely  laid 
away,  and  she  sits  hour  after  hour  darning  her  children's 
stockings  and  turning  and  arranging  a  scanty  wardrobe  which 
no  ingenuity  can  make  more  than  decent.  She  was  a  beau 
tiful  musician  ;  but  a  musical  instrument  is  now  a  thing  of 
the  past ;  she  only  lulls  her  baby  to  sleep  with  snatches  of 
the  songs  which  used  to  form  the  attraction  of  brilliant 
salons.  She  feels  that  a  world  of  tastes  and  talents  are  lying 
dormant  in  her  while  she  is  doing  the  daily  work  of  a  nurse, 
cook,  and  seamstress  ;  but  she  remembers  who  took  upon 
Him  the  form  of  a  servant  before  her,  and  she  has  full  faith 
that  her  beautiful  gifts,  like  bulbs  sleeping  under  ground, 
shall  come  up  and  blossom  again  in  that  fair  future  which 
He  has  promised.  Therefore  it  is  that  she  has  no  sighs  for 
the  present  or  the  past,  —  no  quarrel  with  her  life,  or  her 
lot  in  it ;  she  is  in  harmony  with  herself  and  with  all  around 
her ;  her  husband  looks  upon  her  as  a  fair  daily  miracle,  and 
her  children  rise  up  and  call  her  blessed. 

But,  having  laid  the  broad  foundation  of  faith  in  a  better 
life,  as  the  basis  on  which  to  ground  our  present  happiness, 
we  who  are  of  the  ideal  nature  must  proceed  to  build  thereon 
wisely. 


458  LITTLE  FOXES 

In  the  first  place,  we  must  cultivate  the  duty  of  self- 
patience  and  self-toleration.  Of  all  the  religionists  and 
moralists  who  ever  taught,  Fenelon  is  the  only  one  who  has 
distinctly  formulated  the  duty  which  a  self-educator  owes 
to  himself.  HAVE  PATIENCE  WITH  YOURSELF  is  a  direction 
often  occurring  in  his  writings,  and  a  most  important  one 
it  is,  —  because  patience  with  ourselves  is  essential,  if  we 
would  have  patience  with  others.  Let  us  look  through  the 
world.  Who  are  the  people  easiest  to  be  pleased,  most 
sunny,  most  urbane,  most  tolerant  ?  Are  they  not  persons 
from  constitution  and  temperament  on  good  terms  with 
themselves,  —  people  who  do  not  ask  much  of  themselves, 
or  try  themselves  severely,  and  who  therefore  are  in  a  good 
humor  for  looking  upon  others  ?  But  how  is  a  person  who 
is  conscious  of  a  hundred  daily  faults  and  errors  to  have 
patience  with  himself  ?  The  question  may  be  answered  by 
asking,  What  would  you  say  to  a  child  who  fretted,  scolded, 
dashed  down  his  slate,  and  threw  his  book  on  the  floor,  be 
cause  he  made  mistakes  in  his  arithmetic  ?  You  would  say, 
of  course,  "  You  are  but  a  learner ;  it  is  not  to  be  expected 
that  you  will  not  make  mistakes  ;  all  children  do.  Have 
patience."  Just  as  you  would  talk  to  that  child,  talk  to 
yourself.  Be  reconciled  to  a  lot  of  inevitable  imperfection ; 
be  content  to  try  continually,  and  often  to  fail.  It  is  the 
inevitable  condition  of  human  existence,  and  is  to  be  ac 
cepted  as  such.  A  patient  acceptance  of  mortifications  and 
of  defeats  of  our  life's  labor  is  often  more  efficacious  for  our 
moral  advancement  than  even  our  victories. 

In  the  next  place,  we  must  school  ourselves  not  to  look 
with  restless  desire  to  degrees  of  excellence  in  any  depart 
ment  of  life  which  circumstances  evidently  forbid  our  at 
taining.  For  a  woman  with  plenty  of  money  and  plenty 
of  well-trained  servants  to  be  content  to  have  fly-specked 
windows,  or  littered  rooms,  or  a  slovenly-ordered  table,  is  a 
sin.  But  in  a  woman  in  feeble  health,  encumbered  with  a 


EXACTINGNESS  459 

flock  of  restless  little  ones,  and  whose  circumstances  allow 
her  to  keep  but  one  servant,  it  may  be  a  piece  of  moral 
heroism  to  shut  her  eyes  on  many  such  things,  while  secur 
ing  mere  essentials  to  life  and  health.  It  may  be  a  vir 
tue  in  her  not  to  push  neatness  to  such  lengths  as  to  wear 
herself  out,  or  to  break  down  her  only  servant,  and  to  be 
resigned  to  have  her  tastes  and  preferences  for  order,  clean 
liness,  and  beauty  crossed,  as  she  would  resign  herself  to 
any  other  affliction.  No  purgatory  can  be  more  severe  to 
people  of  a  thorough  and  exact  nature  than  to  be  so  situated 
that  they  can  only  half  do  everything  they  undertake  ;  yet 
such  is  the  fiery  trial  to  which  many  a  one  is  subjected. 
Life  seems  to  drive  them  along  without  giving  them  time 
for  anything ;  everything  is  ragged,  hasty  performance,  of 
which  the  mind  most  keenly  sees  and  feels  the  raggedness 
and  hastiness.  Even  one  thing  done  as  it  really  ought  to 
be  done  would  be  a  rest  and  refreshment  to  the  soul ;  but 
nowhere,  in  any  department  of  its  undertakings,  is  there  any 
such  thing  to  be  perceived. 

But  there  are  cases  where  a  great  deal  of  wear  and  tear 
can  be  saved  to  the  nerves  by  a  considerate  making  up  of 
one's  mind  as  to  how  much  in  certain  circumstances  had 
better  be  undertaken  at  all.  Let  the  circumstances  of  life 
be  surveyed,  the  objects  we  are  pursuing  arranged  and 
counted,  and  see  if  there  are  not  things  here  and  there 
that  may  be  thrown  out  of  our  plans  entirely,  that  others  may 
be  better  done. 

What  if  the  whole  care  of  expensive  table  luxuries,  like 
cake  and  preserves,  be  thrown  out  of  a  housekeeper's  bud 
get,  in  order  that  the  essential  articles  of  cookery  may  be 
better  prepared  ?  What  if  ruffling,  embroidery,  and  the 
entire  department  of  kindred  fine  arts,  be  thrown  out  of  her 
calculations,  in  providing  for  the  clothing  of  a  family  ? 
Many  a  feeble  woman  has  died  of  too  much  ruffling,  as  she 
patiently  sat  up  night  after  night  sewing  the  thread  of  a 


4GO  LITTLE   FOXES 

precious,  invaluable  life  into  elaborate  articles  which  her 
children  were  none  the  healthier  or  more  virtuous  for  wear 
ing. 

Ideality  is  constantly  ramifying  and  extending  the  de 
partment  of  the  toilette  and  the  needle  into  a  world  of  work 
and  worry,  wherein  distracted  women  wander  up  and  down, 
seeing  no  end  anywhere.  The  sewing  -  machine  was  an 
nounced  as  a  relief  to  these  toils ;  but  has  it  proved  so  ? 
We  trow  not.  It  only  amounts  to  this,  —  that  now  there 
can  be  seventy-two  tucks  on  each  little  petticoat,  instead  of 
fifteen,  as  before,  and  that  twice  as  many  garments  are  made 
up  and  held  to  be  necessary  as  formerly.  The  women  still 
sew  to  the  limit  of  human  endurance  ;  and  still  the  old 
proverb  holds  good,  that  woman's  work  is  never  done. 

In  the  matter  of  dress,  much  wear  and  tear  of  spirit  and 
nerves  may  be  saved  by  not  beginning  to  go  in  certain 
directions,  well  knowing  that  they  will  take  us  beyond  our 
resources  of  time,  strength,  and  money. 

There  is  one  word  of  fear  in  the  vocabulary  of  women  of 
our  time  which  must  be  pondered  advisedly,  —  Trimming. 
In  old  times  a  good  garment  was  enough ;  nowadays  a  gar 
ment  is  nothing  without  trimming.  Everything,  from  the 
first  article  that  the  baby  wears  up  to  the  elaborate  dress  of 
the  bride,  must  be  trimmed  at  a  rate  that  makes  the  trim 
ming  more  than  the  original  article.  A  dress  can  be  made 
in  a  day,  but  it  cannot  be  trimmed  under  two  or  three  days. 
Let  a  faithful,  conscientious  woman  make  up  her  mind  how 
much  of  all  this  burden  of  life  she  will  assume,  remembering 
wisely  that  there  is  no  end  to  ideality  in  anything,  and  that 
the  only  way  to  deal  with  many  perplexing  parts  of  life  is 
to  leave  them  out  altogether. 

Mrs.  Kirkland,  in  her  very  amusing  account  of  her  log- 
cabin  experiences,  tells  us  of  the  great  disquiet  and  incon 
venience  she  had  in  attempting  to  arrange  in  her  lowly 
abode  a  most  convenient  clothes-press,  which  was  manifestly 


EXACTINGNESS  461 

too  large  for  the  establishment.  Having  labored  with  the 
cumbersome  convenience  for  a  great  length  of  time,  and 
with  much  discomfort,  she  at  last  resigned  the  ordering 
of  it  to  a  brawny-armed  damsel  of  the  forest,  who  began 
by  pitching  it  out  of  doors,  with  the  comprehensive  re 
mark,  that,  "where  there  wasn't  room  for  a  thing,  there 
was  n't." 

The  wisdom  which  inspired  the  remark  of  this  rustic 
maiden  might  have  saved  the  lives  of  many  matrons  who 
have  worn  themselves  out  in  vain  attempts  to  make  comforts 
and  conveniences  out  of  things  which  they  had  better  have 
thrown  out  of  doors  altogether. 

True,  it  requires  some  judgment  to  know  what,  among 
objects  commonly  pursued  in  any  department,  we  really 
ought  to  reject ;  and  it  requires  independence  and  steadi 
ness  to  say,  "  I  will  not  begin  to  try  to  do  certain  things 
that  others  are  doing,  and  that,  perhaps,  they  expect  of 
me ;  "  but  there  comes  great  leisure  and  quietness  of  spirit 
from  the  gaps  thus  made.  When  the  unwieldy  clothes- 
press  was  once  cast  out,  everything  in  the  log-cabin  could 
have  room. 

A  mother,  who  is  anxiously  trying  to  reconcile  the  watch 
ful  care  and  training  of  her  little  ones  with  the  maintenance 
of  fashionable  calls  and  parties,  may  lose  her  life  in  the 
effort  to  do  both,  and  do  both  in  so  imperfect  a  manner  as 
never  to  give  her  a  moment's  peace.  But  on  the  morrow 
after  she  comes  to  the  serious  and  Christian  resolve,  "  The 
training  of  my  children  is  all  that  I  can  do  well,  and  hence 
forth  it  shall  be  my  sole  object,"  there  falls  into  her  tumul 
tuous  life  a  Sabbath  pause  of  peace  and  leisure.  It  is  true 
that  she  is  still  doing  a  work  in  which  absolute  perfection 
ever  recedes ;  but  she  can  make  relative  attainments  far 
nearer  the  standard  than  before. 

Lastly,  under  the  head  of  ideality  let  us  resolve  to  be 
satisfied  with  our  own  past  doings,  when  at  the  time  of  do- 


462  LITTLE   FOXES 

ing  we  used  all  the  light  God  gave  us,  and  did  all  in  our 
power. 

The  backward  action  of  ideality  is  often  full  as  tormenting 
as  its  forward  and  prospective  movements.  The  moment  a 
thing  is  done  and  over,  one  would  think  that  good  sense 
would  lead  us  to  drop  it  like  a  stone  in  the  ocean ;  but  the 
morbid  idealist  cannot  cut  loose  from  the  past. 

"  Was  that,  after  all,  the  best  thing  ?  Would  it  not  have 
been  better  so  or  so  ?  "  And  the  self- tormented  individual 
lies  wakeful,  during  weary  night-hours,  revolving  a  thou 
sand  possibilities,  and  conjuring  up  a  thousand  vague  per- 
hapses.  "  If  I  had  only  done  so  now,  perhaps  this  result 
would  have  followed,  or  that  would  not ;  "  and  as  there  is 
never  any  saying  but  that  so  it  might  have  turned  out,  the 
labyrinth  and  the  discontent  are  alike  endless. 

Now  there  is  grand  good  sense  in  the  Apostle's  direction, 
"  Forgetting  the  things  that  are  behind,  press  forward." 
The  idealist  should  charge  himself  as  with  an  oath  of  God, 
to  let  the  past  alone  as  an  accomplished  fact,  solely  con 
cerning  himself  with  the  inquiry,  "  Did  I  not  do  the  best 
I  then  knew  how  ?  " 

The  maxim  of  the  Quietists  is,  that,  when  we  have  acted 
according  to  the  best  light  we  have,  we  have  expressed  the 
will  of  God  under  those  circumstances,  —  since,  had  it  been 
otherwise,  more  and  different  light  would  have  been  given 
us  ;  and  with  the  will  of  God  done  by  ourselves  as  by  him 
self,  it  is  our  duty  to  be  content. 

Having  written  thus  far  in  my  article,  and  finding  nothing 
more  at  hand  to  add  to  it,  I  went  into  the  parlor  to  read  it 
to  Jenny  and  Mrs.  Crowfield.  I  found  the  former  engaged 
in  the  task  of  binding  sixty  yards  of  quilling  (so  I  think 
she  called  it),  which  were  absolutely  necessary  for  perfect 
ing  a  dress  ;  and  the  latter  was  braiding  one  of  seven  little 
petticoats,  stamped  with  elaborate  patterns,  which  she  had 


EXACTINGNESS  463 

taken  from  Marianne,  because  that  virtuous  matron  was 
ruining  her  eyes  and  health  in  a  blind  push  to  get  them 
done  before  October. 

Both  approved  and  admired  my  piece,  and  I  thought  of 
Saint  Anthony's  preaching  to  the  fishes  :  — 

"  The  sermon  now  ended, 

Each  turned  and  descended  ; 

The  pikes  went  on  stealing, 

The  eels  went  on  eeling. 

Much  delighted  were  they, 
But  preferred  the  old  way." 


14  DAY  USE 

RETURN  TO  DESK  FROM  WHICH  BORROWED 

LOAN  DEPT. 

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LD  21A-60m-3.'65 
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i(Beecher) 
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studies 

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